May Sky Challenge
mayskychallenge.com
mayskychallenge.com
I think our children won't be "anti-smartphone" in the same vain as we are not "anti-mainframe"
And the idea that we will jump to having our devices being able to read our mind seems like a stretch.
As VR and AR progresses there are great new features like hand tracking, which allows for even higher precision than swiping on your phone. I agree with you, interacting with things through your hands is really intuitive, but I don't think we have unlocked it's full potential.
It’s possible that future technology will make it more useful, but on the current trend it doesn’t seem likely that AR/VR would surpass even my Apple Watch usage, let alone iPhone.
Smartphones won’t go away. Yes, wearables will replace some use cases – just as personal computers replaced some mainframe use cases and smartphones replaced some personal computer use cases. But smartphones will continue to evolve, just as one can draw a line from time sharing on an IBM 709 to spinning up a Kubernetes cluster.
A smartwatch can give directions, read and reply to messages, look up information, display schedules, and take pictures—all without taking my attention too far away from the real world. Anything longer I may as well do on a computer or tablet. I wouldn't be able to read the news or random forums, but the inability to do that 24/7 would be healthy IMO.
I don't forsee a future where smartwatches could replace smartphones for everyone, but I do think they could replace them for a lot of people, me included.
And, society can adapt. People used to talk on the phone in public constantly (and still do to a large extent, just less). This would be far less intrusive.
† For what it's worth, this is Google's AI. Rebble, the community-run service that lets Pebble's operate post-shutdown, chose Google for voice dictation, and as a result its more accurate now than it was originally.
Children born with smartphones around see them as ordinary and probably less addicting, it's what comes next we need to worry about for them.
Edit: Observing their behaviour, and my own (and other adults), I'd speculate that they are inherently addictive rather than simply new and shiny (I don't view them that way any more). To be honest, I find this pretty self evident.
At one point, we paused the movie due to an ambulance outside, and the boy lept from the couch to his phone to get his little fix.
People don't use phones to look cool or generally don't think about the style of using a device. It's not a trend people are following. They want the entertainment, function or stimulation from the device. So if electronics somehow become unstimulating, boring or useless to children, maybe then.
Children will always want all of your attention, and their play is frankly mind-numbing. Due to the COVID situation, I am entertaining my toddler 14 hours a day 5 days a week and I find it impossible to stay engaged for more than a few minutes playing a child's game.
Netflix/streaming also encourages large stretches of being glued to the screen, which isn't always great.
It is a slow start to the day and I feel connected to friends and family. I am living abroad, a few hours behind my native country where most of my friends live. So when I wake up, there is already a lot of activity in the WhatsApp groups I am part of. I don't use WhatsApp professionally, so it's just personal stuff. I love to read trivial chatting from my friends and family first thing in the morning. Specially living abroad. Specially these days of Covid.
I also check Twitter and HN, but just a quick look, not the reason I pick up my phone. I spend about 20min on WhatsApp, 5min elsewhere.
It also wakes me up, so I don't oversleep. Then I am ready to go the bathroom, prepare my breakfast and when I get to work, I am ready and sharp.
I believe people use the idea of picking your phone first thing in the morning as an image and a proxy for phone addiction, I don't think it is. I believe I would be less healthy if I had my phone locked away from me in the morning.
but in quarantine my days are sliding into a featureless wash of playing online games, reading HN and articles about Covid, watching Netflix. ostensibly there is development work I should be doing, but I just can't seem to get engaged.
really finding that if I spend an hour or two directly upon waking doing things like cleaning and sewing and food prep...maybe a little computerless whiteboard work..I'm feeling quite a bit more engaged and human. I'm a lot less prone to just faffing about on the internet.
There's a lot of digital junk food fighting for your attention, that's for sure. But there's a lot of other options, and, unlike real-life balanced diet and fine dining, it's either free or cheap.
Something functional alcoholics will often say is "I don't have a problem, I just like a beer with dinner, nothing wrong with that", and a usual response is "okay, then how about you take a week off? If it's just something you like, then that should be no problem".
Of course, that's where the excuses start!
This May challenge is conceptually similar. Nothing in your morning routine would be disrupted by more than 120 seconds, if you took the time to look at the sky and appreciate it before starting in with the phone.
Again, I'm mentioning this on behalf of other people who might be a bit in denial about how they start their day.
My personal routine starts with plugging the laptop into the monitor and brewing coffee, and browsing Twitter and HN while my brain wakes up. I'm not big on my phone in general, especially not lately.
But I'm intending to add looking at the sky for the month of May (although not joining a Facebook group, yuck!).
It sounds nice.
The watching the sky thing is more of a marketing device that I might skip though.
I don't remember my parents having this problem with their newspaper. They did look at the newspaper before the sky every morning.
This seems to be a pretty common comparison, especially as a reply to older generations remarking on everyone always being on their phones. Kind of a meme at this point[1][2].
It really makes me think that not a lot of thought/concern is given to the major difference between print media and modern technology/social media: print media is a one-way relationship. There is no interaction between the reader and the newspaper - it's a passive information source.
Social media on the other hand is a two-way, highly interactive, highly curated information source/communication tool and that is where the comparison falls flat on it's face. To compare the two in the context of mental health/anti-social behavior/distraction etc. is missing the point.
And for anyone interested in some research on the subjects of technology and social media as it related to kids, I will always plug the non-profit I work for:
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research
1. https://memeworld.funnyjunk.com/pictures/Kids+these+days+alw...
2. https://miro.medium.com/max/1080/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4MP2HQ.jp...
I have no mouth, yet I must stream.
You are definitely right there, but my point was the barrier for entry has been lowered. No need to have a printing press and to be accepted for sale at storefronts - if you have an internet connection, you have a voice.
* The quantity
* Ease of access to more marginal opinions
* "Dark patterns" such as infinite scrolling
* Internet "debates" traded in 140 or 280-character blows, to be endlessly liked and retweeted
* Anybody, anywhere can make a good-sounding point which is still logically flawed
* Centralization, not of opinions but of specific publishing platforms that have the final say in the control of content, despite being practically public spaces[1]
[1] While it's true that newspapers and publishers had a lot of control over public opinion, Twitter has more control over public opinion than any newspaper in history.
Yeah, newspapers don't scream at you.
On the other hand, people are using smartphones primarily to talk to other people. With IMs, not voice calls, but they talk with each other nonetheless. That's about as opposite of antisocial as you can have.
I don't believe that's true. I thinnk most smartphone time for most users is spent passively consuming broadcast social media: scrolling through Instagram photos and Facebook posts.
Imagine how different Instagram would if after ten minutes of scrolling you reached a point where it said "That's it. No more photos until tomorrow!"
(You may remember that Facebook used to work that way with their chronological feed. As soon as you saw a familiar post, you knew you were done. There's a reason they killed that feature.)
"You can join the event on facebook, so we can keep in touch, and see how popular this gets! Invite your friends, spread the word!"
The reason people look at their screens first thing in the morning is to see what everybody else is doing.
And then this line of SUPER bright satellites came over. I think they were part of the Spacex system of satellites. I'm hoping there aren't more coming. They were brighter than the moon, really, just smaller.
SpaceX seems to be working with astronomers to minimize impact of their satellites on the night sky. While satellites visible to the naked eye are annoying, they are a real problem for astronomical observations where they can saturate the sensors and cause all sorts of artifacts.
[0] Well, that's saying more about my environment than the satellites themselves.
My understanding is that SpaceX is working with astronomers to minimize the impact to the night sky, but there are hiccups like just after a launch.
1. Lots of lights are moving all over the night sky.
2. There are only stars visible in the night sky.
Considering the implications, which of those two futures sounds preferable?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1252986968058802177
The important bits:
Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut Apr 23
Is there a reason they’ve been brighter and more noticeable lately? I feel like tons of people are spotting them all of a sudden and they went fairly unnoticed before.
Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @Erdayastronaut
Solar panel angle during orbit raise / park. We’re fixing it now.
I gave up alarms over a decade ago, and I never wake up late. You have a great internal clock in your own head and the subtle stress of knowing an alarm is pending is horrible for actually getting restful sleep.
Don’t believe me? Try it on a weekend or two, or if you have a week with few early events, set a resolve to do some task by a specific time and remind yourself to wake for it before going to bed. It’s amazingly simple once you get used to it.
What I find helps the most for getting restful sleep is to do this at night:
1. Set an alarm for when I want to wake up.
2. Go to bed at a time that makes my sleep duration an integer multiple of my sleep cycle. For me, that's around 3.5 hours. I'll feel more rested with 7 hours of sleep than 9 because at 9 hours I'm woken from deep sleep.
3. When I get in bed, mentally how much time between there is between now and my alarm going off. Deliberately tell myself, "My alarm is going off in X hours."
Setting an alarm cures my "I overslept!" anxiety. The other two points help align my alarm to my sleep cycle so I'm in shallow sleep when it goes off.
* Comparing newspaper to infinite social media feeds and online resources is a very incomplete model
* There are clearly people who see the value in this, so don't be so quick to dismiss it. I feel the same as /u/convolvatron in that the quarantine has really screwed up my routine, and has worsened my addiction to social media/internet/interacting somehow with the digital world. The days where I wake up and make coffee/have a pre-Internet routine are better on the whole.
* Don't assume this post thinks everyone needs this - it is a recommendation for those who do, or those who simply like trying different habits.
* Finally, as a compromise, if you insist on some usage in the morning: Consider only using your alarm, and getting an email subscription or podcast of the morning's news. Though it dilutes the utility of this exercise, I believe the worst part of electronics addiction is the unbounded nature of it. Having a clear boundary of "one five minute podcast" or "only check email / SMS of friends" is much better than "Load up the times, post, reddit, HN, Facebook, messenger, Whatsapp, Hangouts, Slack, Signal, and the city paper".
Except for that, I generally don't use my phone a lot. I don't trust most mobile apps because I have no good way of isolating and limiting an app's capabilities on my phone (compared to the web where things like uMatrix and related tech are commonplace) and the few apps I do have are more of the information-pull rather than the information-push type (although that's unintentional).
Maybe a bit off-topic but I think mobile operating systems are generally more a burden than a help for me. Android's design decisions make a lot of sense for a lot of people's needs but for me it's just too limiting compared to PC operating systems so I simply don't do a lot on my phone.
(On a side note, it seems that SpaceX has made really good progress on solving the in-service brightness problem of Starlink, and hopes to launch all their satellites—starting with two launches from now—with low enough in-service brightness to be invisible to the naked eye once on-station.) https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-test-starlink-sun-visor-to-r...
Before it was just nice, now I feel like it’s keeping me sane.
If you're stil sleeping near your phone, stop it. Alarm clocks are very cheap. You don't need any of the fancy features of your phone's alarm - you'll adapt.
For me before I made the change the last thing I'd do at night was look at my phone, the first thing I'd do in the morning was look at my phone, and if I woke in the night I'd look at my phone. Bed is now a mentally distinct place for me, which helps my sleep a lot.
No but seriously.
Who, in 2020, grabs their phone first thing before hitting a drink, or bathroom, or wash your face or whatever you do when you wake up?
I (37M) find it weird. In 2010, sure, it was all new and I was younger maybe. Nowadays I just don't even have to refrain myself, it could be 10, 20 minutes before I look at any screen. It would usually be my laptop actually.
Am I the exception? I'd think a technologically mature crowd to be much less... dependent, less hooked to their phone. I would think of this being an actual challenge for the mainstream Facebooking / Instagramming / Twittering, but not people like us...
[work notwithstanding, evidently, sometimes we need to grab the phone but that's irrelevant to my observations]
However, recently I _have_ been wondering whether being on my phone all the time contributes to those symptoms.
So parent takes care of the child and is able to say "nope, don't do that". Developing this approach is what made me an adult I think (I was in my 30s already, it didn't come naturally to me).
A great trick was audiobooks. You just listen and that wakes the brain up, but a book is really, really so much better than random posts. 30 minutes as you wake up, then get up, have breakfast etc. is sure mind opener.
It becomes a habit, maybe a need even, but it's a good need. Books and exercises is the winning combination for success and happiness (seriously, just these two things put you in the top 5%, or so I hear).
Places like librivox have tons of free content. A well thought-out podcast is good too I think (long-form content). It's the idea of a passive but mind-opening activity.
Then when I'm working during the day I put the phone away silent for ~30 minutes, then take a break and chill for 5-10 minutes, then back at it, rinse and repeat. That's what got me off the dopamine hook I think.
I find even seeing the app icons for notifications on my lock screen can lead me down a nonstop work path where you end up in you PJ's at 11h30 with zero caffeine in you and a feeling of a day already passed.
I totally know the feeling! I think it's really biological, low-level:
- dopamine! It's like a shot, the brain gets triggered.
- familiarity: "feels like home", habits take us to our comfort zone.
> you end up in you PJ's at 11h30 with zero caffeine in you and a feeling of a day already passed.
Haha, yeah... I've been there so often in my teens / twenties.
I think it was self-love + discipline that let me exit that loop. Treating myself like a (inner) child and their parent all-in-one person: forces one to think about well-being first, it gives a feeling it's the "right thing to do" to let yourself chill and avoid that kind of time vortex.
;)
Personally, I like to combine both modes by using moon tracking apps to watch my favorite sky object.
But whatever that makes people lives more varied in this isolation is fine, I guess.
Fail.
What is it with pushing religious stuff into peoples faces? I believe it is offensive to people who either have a different religion or none at all.
One could just say: "You should do a day of digital detox every week. Like for example people do on Shabbat. Or in other ways."
Or you could just give people the benefit of the doubt, read it that way to begin with, and save us all a lot of grief. Regardless...
I believe it is offensive to people...
If you have a personal beef, say it clearly. The rest of us don't need you to run interference for us. I'm of a "different religion" and I think it is an outstanding idea.
I have no beef. I just stated my personal opinion. And I even stated a way how it could be framed with religious content in the text.
I still feel I did a reasonable critique with an idea of how to communicate in a less offensive way towards others.
I'm trying to work out my intended goals if I'm going to attempt such a thing. I do believe cellphone usage in bed is a negative. But if that's what I'm trying to combat, I'm not sure just "looking at the sky first thing in the morning" is going to help me accomplish reducing phone usage in bed. Because once I've looked at the sky for the morning, I'm free to do whatever, and there's only one other thing I'm going to do first thing in the morning.
The same happened when I tried to follow a course on building self esteem. It consists of writing three positive experiences and three things you're grateful for each morning. The author noted: if you're skeptical at staying on track, try it for 30 days. You'd be surprised at yourself.
All that happened was that I did this for exactly the 30 days, stopped cold, and haven't found the motivation to start again. Rereading what I wrote during that time on the occasion, I fail to see what I accomplished.
Same with a 30-day morning exercise routine. My thoughts: I'm no longer indebted to follow this person's advice. I've tried it. I've forced myself through it. I don't feel any different, except perpetually exhausted throughout the rest of the day. Now what?
I still want to do these things, because there's clearly some benefit to be had if someone went out of their way to host an entire webpage for this concept, and stating that it "sounds easy" as opposed to "it is easy". Exercise leads to better health. Writing some words supposedly leads to better mental health.
Yet it always feels compulsory, like someone on the Internet has the power to control my behavior against my will, and if I "fail" the "challenge" I'll think less of myself for it. The only reason I'm doing this is because someone I don't know suggested it, and the whole point is once you start, you have to follow through. So essentially, I feel like no matter what happens I'm roping myself into something I will not stick through to the end. Then I end up dreading every moment of it, eventually forgetting why I even bothered to try it in the first place amongst how forced and tiresome it is, and inevitably go back to my usual habits.
Ultimately it comes down to consciously not trying and staying the course in equilibrium, or trying, failing, and managing to convince myself I didn't have it in me, or that I see no benefit. For something as simple as scribbling some notes in a journal.
I noticed that my desire to exercise disappeared entirely the moment I bought myself an exercise bike and put it two feet away from my desk at home.
I also tried sleeping for a week with my phone in a separate room. Cue not being able to fall asleep outright until 3-4 AM for the entire week. At least 12 AM with my phone on night mode was better for my health before.
I don't get it. Maybe when next month comes around I'll just have to try harder, as they say. For $DIETY_NAME's sake, it's just looking at the sky.
This is literal boomer newspaper comic type stuff at 75 upvotes.
Seriously.
I can look at the phone and the sky in one day. I enjoy both of those things.
I don't see much difference between my use of tv,cpu compared to my parents tv/paper/magazine or grand parents tv/radio/paper and magazines. Every generation has new socialization norms and every one has to fight for attention.