Life before smartphones (2020)
mattruby.substack.com
mattruby.substack.com
These days, (nearly) everyone carries a camera around all the time, and one that is quite probably much better than the one I had in 1992. They can take dozens, even hundreds of pictures without breaking a sweat, and it does not cost anything.
Nostalgia is a very warped mirror. Back then, I did not miss the ability to take dozens of pictures at no cost, because the option did not exist. Was it better? Worse? Neither, I think. But this is the first time I feel old and appreciate it for the history I have lived through. Getting old is weird, but it sure is interesting. (For reference, I'm 40. "That's not old", I hear someone say, but I have never been this old before, so for me it's all new.)
Nowadays, a physical album seems to have taken the place of your camera in the 90s. Not quite a luxury item, but you'd have to be "into that" to go to the trouble of making a physical album.
My kids have limited screen time, not unlike my parents pushing me outside to play. Until they have mature impulse control and a variety of experience I'll continue to guide them. But without all the judgemental 'lessons' and talking down to that I experienced.
People our age only have a few childhood pictures, and they are warped by time on analog media. Those pictures of us as a kid look really old because they are naturally filtered. Soon people will wonder WTF old-pic filters are for, and some historian will have to explain why it's blurred and the colors are faded. Also why did people have clothes for each decade?
Our kids, by contrast, have had pictures taken of them every week at least. With metadata so you know where you were. And they're digital images that won't fade. When our kids are 40, they can look at an archive of how they looked pretty much every week of their lives. Not only that, they can already search the archive for particular situations.
...and in the end I forget to enjoy the view. Before digital cameras and mobile phones, I would just marvel at the view and enjoy it. Now I only really see it when I'm back home, flipping through digital photos (and sometimes not even that, how many photos we take that we never look at again?).
I do a lot of photography and this is a conundrum that many in my circle are aware of. My solutions:
- Use a (pseudo)rangefinder camera like a Leica or Fujifilm X100/X-Pro with an optical viewfinder. Even pre-digital SLRs would subject you to, in the moment of photographing, looking at the photograph. With an uncoupled optical viewfinder, you look at life [4]. While the photograph is a powerful simulacrum, it is not life itself; the wall-sized print of the sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji that hangs in my living room is merely a visual paraphrase of the experience.
- Shooting film and the friction that goes into handling, developing, scanning, and (hopefully, eventually) printing brings some of the Benjaminian aura back to the visual record [5].
- Reading about Japanese aesthetics, specifically the notions of imperfections and impermanence, has helped me be more present and aware of the transience of the moment [6].
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976135044...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113...
[3] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/74825
[4] https://youtu.be/kueqi8A3LQc?t=254
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...
[6] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911856.A_Tractate_on_Jap...
Even when going someplace new as a tourist, it's tempting to worry too much about photos. If I really want to play the aspiring travelling landscape photographer it would be work, a lot of it.
With a modern phone camera, for the purpose of a "I was here, I did/saw this" snapshot for posterity, it's pretty hard to mess up a photo so bad that it is worthless as long as it's pointed in the right direction. Take a few shots, but don't worry too much about quality or quantity.
I try to keep that in mind when snapping photos or taking videos of my kids, and pan over to the oldsters in the room from time to time, even if all I want is to record the kids.
> What I really want are pictures of the halls in high school, street racing, parties with giant bonfires and beer.
Can confirm that a couple really, really long shots with the camera rolling for no particular purpose and capturing normal stuff happening (mostly just the audio) were among the best parts of the home videos, IMO.
I have a deliberately created Year in the Life type book from a company I used to work for that was made a couple of years before I joined the company. But it's a very atypical work.
So there is a load of data but ever improving AI will get better at showing you the cool stuff.
They might still wonder "Why only 8K resolution?! Why aren't they in 3D and interactive?!"
They might not fade, but they are augmented by noise filtering algorithms, HDR and other tech that still subtly affects the picture quality and perception.
As a kid I used to play outside a lot, and my mother had no clue where I was, nor could she easily find out. I could be outside all day without her worrying that I'd be abducted or involved in an accident.
Now that all has completely changed, and my mother has too. Some years ago when I walked into the hallway of my house I coincidentally noticed a lot of people in front of my door. So I opened it, and it was the police that was about to bust the door with a battering ram. As it happened I hadn't answered my phone in a couple of hours. After multiple calls unanswered, my mom had called 911 on me. And my doorbell was broken, police didn't even knock.. they wanted the action, probably.
I was just freaking programming with the deep-work-destroying phone thingy on silence (where it should be most of the time, imho).
Something I have done (accidentally at first, now on purpose) is to not respond to messages (personal) quickly, most of the time. People adjust to that rather fast and stop worrying so much. People in my circles know now that I am rarely going to answer within a few hours and expectations are adjusted. So then going outside for a few hours with no phone is no longer a "thing" - you just do it and people will expect you to get back to them when you do.
Also I go outside without a phone on occasion. That feels like you leave a burden behind, and you are somehow more free. The phone is that easy thing you just grab to do a quick check of something on Wikipedia, or you happen to notice a notification. It is a distraction-device, keeping you busy. And among strangers, feeling less comfortable, well you can grab your phone and start staring at it. This behavior is like with smoking. Just like the relaxed cigarette cowboy in the ads, but now you casually light up the screen and be cool.
It has WiFi but no cell phone. Really looking forward to just being out for runs, with no possibility of contact or checking notifications etc.
[0] I know I still have IMs, but mails tend to be things I need to do at a computer and seeing them only stresses me with things to do for later.
One would hope the cops at least apologized for nearly destroying your front door all because you didn't answer the door. It's not like they had a warrant for your arrest or something!
We had a SWAT team destroy a fence with an armored vehicle during a standoff and they were just like, "not my problem."
Apparently they don't want to have to make decisions based on cost.
Personally, I'd just have the state cover it, but explicitly not have it come out of the police budget. A reimbursement check or tax credit could work.
In the event that malice is suspected on the part of any involved party (police department, property owner, 911 caller, home invader, etc.), it would be on the state to press charges and recoup its loss.
Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes.
I said "hard no" explaining that it meant that it meant that I could never watch a movie uninterrupted, read a book, take a nap, etc. Also, Driving. I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen).
I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails.
I have another friend who always calls on his commute home and gets offended when I don't answer. The idea alone that someone is obligated to answer the phone is insane. What if I don't want to spend an hour shooting the shit with you because I'm doing something else?
I miss the days when I could just walk away from contact.
Like in 1984. People who want to "spend time alone" are deviant, diseased and antisocial. And must be stopped.
Consider the soft forces of marketing, distraction, conformity, attraction and temptation. They are as real as a twisted arm.
I dunno man. That sounds weird.
When you live in a world that requires bills to be paid via mobile, rent to be paid via mobile, mass transit tickets bought via mobile, physical location reservation via mobile, as well as any customer service only available via mobile... who cares about personal addiction; normal life isn't feasible without a mobile phone at that point, and very few (if any at all) mobile phones are designed from the premise that they should respect your attention.
The mobile phones that are designed to preserve the users attention are widely incompatible with any functions that the user needs (billpay/specific group apps, whatever) to stay integrated with the systems being forced upon them, so those options are already non-starter.
That means this problem is worth discussing -- non-compulsive normal people as well as compulsive addicts are being affected by the lack of 'respect for attention' that mobile phones have, and this problem intersects with the 'required prevalence' of mobile phones across the world.
My overall point, however, is that there will never be an external negative reinforcement to look on your phone. We all have it internalized already and that's far more compelling than any external pressure ever could be.
Not quite. Tech and social media companies have spent billions to make their devices and apps as addictive as possible.
When I had a smartphone, I never told my employer. I told him I only had a Landline, and I had a chatty roommate.
On the days I felt they might call, I just took the phone off the hook.
At the end of the day, we as people have to react to this environment that's been created, but the people who created it knew what they were doing.
I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on some work activities but those are just the high priority visible stuff otherwise maybe if someone did not remind and make it a priority maybe it was anyways not a priority. But then things slip through the crack once in a while.
As someone that lives life like this, yes, that's the point. If it's really important, they can ping me again and remind me to respond. Or when I have some downtime I'll peruse through my messages and emails again and stumble upon it and remember to reply.
(Sometimes I genuinely missed something interesting but this is rare.)
The secret is to not be interrupted. If you're already reading the text, you might as well go and answer.
If you want to change something you will need to stop being interrupted (close the IM window, put your phone on silent, ...) and check once you have time. If you don't have time for a while, possibly give it a quick skim in case something important happened.
Things will always slip through the cracks. If you attend every interruption, it will once in a while interrupt an interruption itself and you're at status quo. At worst, put things on a todo list.
It's possible to do it.
It would work like this:
A list of firewall rules about who/what was able to send notifications. The firewall would be able to bump up or down the priority of a message, or discard them. Including rules being able to match say a regex inside the text, sender, time of day filtering.
And then at some specified interval (I would use 25 mins), I get all my notifications that didn't meet the emergency criteria in the firewall.
The iOS Focus mode does seem promising though.
I also wish there were a way for me to send a low-priority message to my wife so that it didn't notify her regardless of her notification settings. We send each other news articles throughout the day but don't really want to interrupt each other. It would be great if there were a sender-side option that could enable this.
I've thought about using a shared document in the Notes app, or just use a different messaging app for low-priority stuff, but it seems like too much overhead. Does anyone else have a way of handling this?
IMO, no one should have have email that sends notifications.
If it's urgent, the sender will call.
Text messaging is asynchronous communication, if someone is expecting an immediate response, they should be calling.
ADDED: Where I work, chat is a more time sensitive than email but basically no one phones out of the blue.
I would much rather someone press a button to say "This is very important, send it now" over calling me where I have to scramble to turn off my music, put my headphones on, etc before answering.
I'd like to address this in a non-judgemental way: not answering texts while driving should be the norm. It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner.
This statement has been proven true by multiple studies now, many of them coming to the conclusion that texting while driving can be as dangerous or more dangerous than driving drunk.
Please don't put other people's life at risk because you feel smarter. Don't text and drive.
There are many reasons why the chart of auto fatalities is dominated by those with less than high school degrees[1], but one is that accurate risk assessment and good choices matter. For example, "Should I send a text one word at a time once an hour on a straight road going through Nebraska in broad daylight, or should I text continually with both hands in heavy traffic?" The first is a risk easily worth taking, even with other people's lives.
1. https://schultzmyers.com/low-income-missourians-more-likely-...
This was also probably no more than 2009 anyways as I was literally trying to get a date with my now ex-wife.
That being said it was a dumb thing to do.
Except that's not how other people would perceive it. I've since learned that it can be incredibly annoying to others, to the point where some people would actually get distressed thinking they would have to answer the texts. Couple that with a bad habit of sending many short texts (it's how you'd write on messaging in the old days) and you have one REALLY REALLY ANNOYING FRIEND (regrettably I was that annoying friend).
So I guess I just want to apologize profusely from the other side of the fence. I'm trying to be much more mindful these days about whether that chit-chat message REALLY needs to be sent RIGHT NOW, or can it just wait for a conversation at a later time?
I'm trying to be much more self-aware in this regard.
In my circles text is generally for when you want to get the message to someone right away, and email is for when they should read at their convenience.
I wish messaging apps gave the sender the ability to hint at urgency, like the priority header that some email clients support, and then the recipient would be able to use that (or choose to ignore it) instead of the relatively rudimentary controls typically available today.
A recipient can put their whole phone silent mode, vibrate mode, or ringtone mode; use DND mode, perhaps with a schedule, perhaps with exceptions for contacts; specify a ringtone per contact; mute specific group messages -- all of these have one thing in common, which is that if the sender has something unusually important or unusually unimportant to say, they're stuck with generating whatever type of notification the recipient already decided is appropriate for a typical message from that sender.
Using phone calls for higher urgency and email for lower urgency is usually good enough, but achieving that same effect in-band through a messaging app for continuity of history would be even better.
I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may not even respond immediately.
I took this to extremes and a couple of weekends back I actually went for a day long solo hike with zero technology with me at all past a torch, map, compass and alcohol stove. I didn't even have any way of telling the time with me. It was invigorating with the obligation to communicate and steal my attention removed. What was most surprising was the removal of a camera and watch. Rather than being focused on recording my journey and keeping to a schedule I was focused on enjoying it. This has led to considerably more vivid memories and a much higher level of satisfaction. A trip I will always remember.
Of course, today only old people like me wear a watch. Curses!
She said that it upset her when she couldn't reach me--and that's one of the reasons she's an ex-wife. Her go to manipulation tactic was this sort of ask for some sort of compromise or make some sort of promise with absolutely not intention of keeping her end of the bargain.
She was the kind of person, if you weren't doing exactly what she wanted you to, you were a piece of shit. Once I realized what was going on (our early relationship was much, much different, I would have never married someone like this) I stopped paying this game and it infuriated her to not have power over me.
Could I throw something at you-- I am sorry to be rude-- could it be your wife thinks you are cheating or is cheating herself? This was what I think was driving my ex-wife's behavior. One, to verify that I was at work and not cheating, and to make sure I was at work so she could cheat herself.
Now she tries to use our child as a manipulation tool, as that is the only aspect of my life that she has any input to.
The ex moved 45 mins away and insisted I pick up and drop off the child. When I started refusing, she just abandoned the kid at her mothers house, betting correctly that I would comply (which i had to).
We had a legal agreement at my ex's insistence that we wouldn't disparage each-other. Now and then I hear from my daughter how I'm a "bad daddy"-- I have never said a single bad thing about my ex to my kiddo despite her cheating, stealing money, using my family and lying to not only our friends and family but the police to get custody.
If you need support or anything, I'm happy to lend an ear.
We had an agreement that the kid will go a certain school, after I bough her half of the house, someone changed their mind. I complied and moved to be in the zone of the new school, then someone changed their mind again. But the 2nd time it is go as court/lawyers sided with me.
I never discuss her with the kid, but I get same tidbits from him as you from your daughter. Children know a good parent, so just do your best. They will love you regardless of what they hear.
The latest thing was her not wanting to handover his medication on handover.
Maybe I’m too old fashioned, but there’s world of difference between ignoring someone contacting you through an async communication channel like SMS and them literally standing next to you and speaking to your face.
However, I wish our culture considered it rude to just walk up to someone in the middle of deep work and ask them something - unless it’s really important and time critical. It could be a simple as sending a message first “free for a quick chat?”
This is on you. Plenty of people manage it. Try turning your phone of.
This is the way. My whole family is like this, and it's awesome. Sometimes people are too busy and don't reply, but no one gets offended. It can be annoying when planning, but overall it's great.
> I have another friend who always calls on his commute home and gets offended when I don't answer.
Similarly, we have a rule that it's not rude to call to shoot the shit, but it's also not rude to send the person straight to voicemail for any reason. It's so nice to just be able to call my sister out of the blue and know that if I'm bothering her, she won't pick up.
It was life and perspective changing. I hate that because of work and personal circumstances I cant do it now, but there is so much value in completely disconnecting when you need/want to.
We shouldnt feel ashamed that this feels wierd to us ~Xennials(+-10yr) having grown up in a time of landline only pots (and phreakin!)
Frankly, as Snowden recently said, our phones are probably our greatest security threat as a country. Going off the digital grid is almost impossible, but knowing how is a matter of national security...
Which is why breaches like OPM etc are so egregious; because once the data is out there, its too late to take back.
My problem is that listening to Drake and Binney, it seems greed was allowed to take over policy decisions in order to maximize kickbacks while failing to protect americans privacy.
In a similar vein, if you were in the wilderness you were on your own. If you were in a group, you could send someone for help. If you were on your own you self-rescued or hoped someone found you. Now, the default assumption is you can call for help--which isn't always the case. More likely with a personal locator beacon but even that isn't a guarantee in canyons or in bad weather.
I was on a sea kayaking trip in Alaska in the early 90s. The guide had a VHF radio but, basically, had anything happened you'd have been waiting for the bush plane to return in a week.
Exactly. I had an emergency situation where I needed to be taken to the hospital over a decade ago. I had a satellite phone on me, yet it was still difficult to get help due to a combination of satellite coverage (Iridium phones would have periods of no coverage due to satellite orbits) and just having a number to call (great thing about 911 is that it works from almost any phone in the US, except satellite phones).
Almost everyone texts or emails and I’ve never had anyone freak out if I didn’t reply quickly.
email/text response time is very much a metric on many employee evaluation systems.
you might not have gotten anyone to 'freak out', but I guarantee that slow response times will get you lower performance reviews at many establishments.
(should it? absolutely not, I am entirely against the practice.)
Or you could be at home and ignore the phone. People used to arrange a time to call or know when to call. It used to be considered impolite to let the phone ring more than 4 or 6 times unless the call was urgent. People never expected you to call back after an unanswered call, since answering machines and caller ID were rare.
> Now that all has completely changed
I find the change immensely frustrating. It isn't so much the expectation of others for an immediate response that bothers me as an internal desire for an immediate response from others. Sure, those feelings may only pop up when something genuinely important pops up. On the other hand, the other person doesn't know that until they check their messages.
Although my experience, especially pre-answering machines, was that a phone call was something that many people felt absolutely had to be answered no matter what you were doing.
Unbeknownst to me, my mom on the other side of the country had been calling intermittently throughout those days (I keep my phone on silent). After a certain point, she called security at my apartment complex to check in on me. Of course she was then informed that my room mates hadn't seen me in several days.
By the time I noticed and returned the missed calls, apparently my mom was just about ready to call the police.
It really depends on the crowd, some people don't mind and get on with their lives and don't answer until next week. I love these people.
Because he's specifically talking about smartphones, not cell phones. He's talking about the information and attention economy, not the more simple highly available reachability.
...and despite that, pictures of UFOs are as awful as ever. ;)
Today if you hovered a UFO over any city over 1000 people you will get endless footage of the event.
I’m waiting for said event.
How poetic
My brother (2 years older) and I had a mechanical camera with rolls of I think 12 or 20 photos (with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film ) . We've got at most 30 pictures of that trip in our family albums. I wish we had taken more pictures as my memory of the trip has faded away quite a bit.
And oh, I've seen many: I worked at a pharmacy, where one of my duties was developing film and helping folks print digital prints. As digital cameras grew better, cheaper, and more widely distributed (thanks in no small part to smartphones), regular film just dropped sharply.
A few folks care, and will sometimes get a fancier digital camera if they can afford it. The vast majority of folks, though, don't seem to care as long as they have the pictures. Realistically, all a lot of folks want is an instant point and click.
I deeply believe that we need structures and limits otherwise it's too easy to become metaphorically obese.
I do take significantly more pictures than I would with a film camera, but this also affords me the freedom to take the pictures right there and then, and not agonise over whether "a shot is worth it".
And yet, I don't end up with thousands or even hundreds of pictures. Almost a full year of 365 challenge somehow taught me to look out for actual good shots, and not obsessively hold the shutter button to everything.
gopher://gopherddit.com
Also, my NNTP list:
alt.ascii-art
alt.folklore.computers
alt.os.linux.slackware
alt.sys.pdp10
comp.infosystems.gopher
comp.lang.forth
comp.lang.perl
comp.lang.perl.announce
comp.lang.perl.faq
comp.lang.perl.misc
comp.lang.perl.moderated
comp.lang.perl.modules
comp.lang.perl.tk
comp.lang.postscript
comp.misc
comp.unix.programmer
comp.unix.shell
fj.life.in-japan
rec.arts.int-fiction
rec.radio.amateur.dx
rec.radio.amateur.moderated
rec.radio.amateur.space
rec.radio.shortwave
Sometimes I interact over NNTP on https://synchro.net (they have a web/BBS interface too). As the pace is much slower, I can comment once or twice a week and everything is still good.
Finally, Gopher and Gemini sites. A really slow pace, no ads, no likes, no bullshit.
If we're talking about how social media shortens our attention span then it may be prudent to reduce usage.
Behaviour-wise, following the prompt, I've replaced checking Reddit with checking Hacker News (similar enough to work, without getting too engaged with the content). I've also replaced Twitter with curated Tweetdeck streams, and Facebook for the news feed with newspaper apps (a free one like AP could work, though I pay for newspaper subscriptions).
Cognitive-wise, in terms of thoughts, I also recognize that social media is designed to hijack your attention and maximize engagement, so I've chosen to frame it as a negative (versus a neutral) habit for my own personal goals.
In short, replacing the habits with similar ones with better consequences, and understanding why I'm doing this has helped.
Most parents I know are deliberate about limiting screen time and ensuring their children don't substitute screen time for other activities. It's actually not that difficult to do so as kids are really good at finding entertainment in their environment even without electronics.
However, some parents give their kids all the tablet, TV, and phone time they want. As they grow up I can see them failing to learn how to play with others their own age because they'd rather reach for a screen than make an effort to do something. They can be frighteningly grumpy when separated from their electronic devices and can even throw tantrums until their parents cave in and give them more screen time.
FWIW, I've also watched parents reverse this trend by slowing weaning their kids off of screen time and substituting other entertaining activities. It doesn't take a whole lot to nudge people in the right direction, but putting that phone down and doing literally anything other than stare at a screen can be a difficult first step to take.
You'll never be more interesting than a smartphone. It's virtually impossible. You're a single human, and that device contains the entire world. If you meet a woman, she has her friends on there. She has her instagram account. Snapchat, TikTok, whatever. You are instantly contrasted against the entire world (against only the highlight reel) and you don't match up. And you never will. You're dull and uninteresting. Just wait until you find yourself swiping on Tinder while your date is in the restroom. No one is immune.
The same is true for children. I'll never be as interesting at a Twitch stream or a flashy YouTube channel. Because no one is "on" at all times. Even at my most interesting, I'm not edited down.
I'm glad to have experienced life before the internet and cell phones. We'll never be back to that point and we may not be fully aware of what was lost for some time yet.
Honestly I think if you are feeling this way then you might want to traverse deeper into your relationships, if someone is looking for an entirely shallow relationship than this could certainly apply.
Maybe it's because my age bracket still remembers flip phones. Maybe it's because I'm upfront about my own tech habits. Maybe it's because I swipe left on profiles that have linked IG accounts.
Whatever the reason(s), you don't need to be as interesting as an app, because you are not an app. Plenty of people just want to connect and relate with someone else, and there's nothing more relatable than not being able to live up to the standards of a glossy influencer ad campaign.
I need to look for more examples of the art of the future. The one paragraph short story (4chan greentexts I guess), the 20 second hit single.
I also heavily limited the types of things Facebook will send push notifications for. It used to be that if I got a notification, it was because one of my friends actually interacted with me in some way. Now I get a bunch of junk notifications that I feel are designed to pull me into the app and not really inform me of anything, to get me back to scrolling a feed. Like I’ll get a notification that someone I don’t know made a post in a group I’ve been in for years without ever getting a similar notification in the previous years. So I basically turned off everything that doesn't involve my actual friends doing something relevant to me.
That answer for me would be everything. (Except messenger which basically one friend uses for me because of where she lives.)
I often go out with only my watch, and it feels so freeing to have only the good side of technology accessible.
I am very strict with the notification settings, otherwise the constant buzzing on the wrist would be worse than a phone.
Thankfully, crawling out of the first year of our second child and sleep, routine, etc. is all getting easier (not being in COVID lockdown helps too) and I'm finding it more common for myself to leave my phone in the bedroom while I enjoy my day with the kids.
I've also realized that the sole reason I bring my phone to the kid's park is in case I need to contact my wife, or vice versa. I've been tempted to get a smart watch w/ cellular just so I have less bulk to carry around, but a "dumb" phone may be just as sufficient ...
I think Nicholas Carr had a great point in The Shallows (2010) [1] -- our brains have a lot of plasticity, even into late adulthood. The way we use the internet probably has a much larger impact on the way we think than we are currently willing to acknowledge. There is a healthy way to integrate electronics into our daily lives, but I don't think many of us have found it.
And then I collapsed your comment. It’s worse than I thought.
> I memorized phone numbers, jotted things down in notebooks, had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars, wrote checks, went to the bank, and daydreamed.
I did all of these (except the phone number one) in the last week.
More than technological advancements or anything else, all of this nostalgia is really just about getting old.
"The human civilization peaked when I turned 12 and started declining when I crossed 25. I pity today's youth." – every generation ever.
There is a serious smartphone addiction problem. It is seriously worrying to see so many of my peers craning their necks, starting at their phone for hours on end. On the bus, in class, while hanging out, it is an observable fact that everyone is almost always on their phone.
I personally believe we are in a watershed moment for human civilization. The harms of this smartphone addicted world will snowball down into later generations who have never known a life without every need catered for and every boring moment seized by entertainment.
Exactly. No one is safe. Everyone I know in my age group (15-26) can not exist without opening up their smartphone every 5 seconds to check social media or watch YouTube.
There was a good documentary about this topic called The Social Network. You may have heard of it. I think it is a good starting point to this way of thinking.
Are you talking about the movie about Mark Zuckerberg? Because this movie is not bad, but it's definitely not a documentary.
These are two completely different things.
Well, it was a visual version. But if anyone has a link to the article I remember, I would appreciate it.
I wonder how they will live their day by day when they are pensioners and their old friends which they haven't seen in decades still will be around inside their phones, asking how they're doing, how their day was.
Then they'll make a trip and visit them because they are nearby. Not much different as it was in the past, but better connected.
Fast forward 30 years, and we are doing OK. Things are different, but OK for us. "Videogames" have been replaced by "games" and we take them for granted and don't pay that much attention.
My take is that, for Generation Alpha kids, all the technology will be like bicycles or cars for us: It will be ubiquitous and they will all now how to use it. So there won't be any question about their use.
I predict the next one is a contact lens with a ticker-tape of entertaining information, and machine-learning driven "ad placements" which are phrases/sentence structure designed to call one's mind to a product's slogan without directly printing it.
The other side of this is that only people who are older can actually notice when things have changed. So, of course it's older people who talk about it the most.
Getting a call in a restaurant. Only happened to me once but I certainly felt like a VIP.
Carrying a tiny map book of London around with me while cycling around. Missing turn after turn until finding there was a canal which basically took me from the center to my uncle's house.
Arranging to meet a friend and then being late. Really late. 1 hour late. He was still there, waiting for me.
My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D
But I think it's better anyway - we sample mating candidates more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and try anew nearly any time until 50, and with some difficulty above.
I mean my aunt had a crushing divorce when she had 3 young children and stayed alone working with all 3 until the internet arrived and she could find a partner much faster...
No need to get to the grandparents' generation, I was the letter writer of my family :) I wrote letters to uncles/aunts/grandpa - mostly at the command of my mum or grandma and sometimes for myself. I remember rushing to the window when the postman yelled and dropped letters through the grill - sometimes there would be more than one! The excitement was palpable - now we sigh with annoyance at the barrage of nonsense and spam that flows into our inbox. Truly a case of quantity over quality.
These days, I feel like that when I get a physical letter that isn't sent by a machine.
On the other side, we self report more isolated, depressed, friendless and dissatisfied than ever in the past decades, have record levels of depression prescriptions and opioids, and people get discovered dead after a month or so when somebody complains about the smell...
Did we track depression before like we do now? Were folks comfortable talking about it or would they lie when they self report?
I'm pretty sure that in the past, folks got discovered dead because of the smell.
similarly it was amazing to smoke in bars, but it's great to not have smoke filled bars
There have to be other daily habits now that going to be seen as disgusting in a few decades too. Maybe things like eating non-cloned meat.
We were 16+ so basically drinking free booze on the plane while smoking our hearts out. We actually drank all the beer on the plane. It looked like a smoke bomb went off.
It must have been the flight from hell for other passengers. Completely unimaginable right now. Thank you Sabena Airlines for this core memory of my youth and not having us arrested in Athens.
We had also written to Czech friends from grad school (U FL) that we would show up in Olomouc on such and such date (Jun 1989, interesting times). They were visiting relatives and we showed up. And were whisked off to 5 days of whirlwind touring the soon to be de-Sovietized Czechoslovakia.
We hosted quite few Eastern Europeans in the '90s, all arranged over snail mail. There was a sense of responsibility that we don't really experience today when dropping in on travels. All the modernity in the world, and nowadays we occasionally get ghosted, even after making repeated prior arrangements using the latest hottest smart phone technology.
I will say this: google translate + maps are the two great inventions we appreciate most. The rest is a solid meh. We have a theory that maximized immediate convenience has an unanticipated effect of atomizing and devaluing some relationships.
Per the parent, I too remember those paper maps while cycling. As in, riding from the Portland Airport to Arcadia and down to LA, using a tour guide, quite tattered at the end. Most of the times before an extended trip (100+ miles) I would memorize the route the night before. This worked fine for 25 years.
* Half of the population watching the same episodes of the same programme simultaneously. If you missed an episode, it was gone forever
* Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.
I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of corroborating information.
On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now, those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and wishes because those can't be falsified.
I find it quite irritating sometimes - can we not just talk about it! - and it's not like I have a long memory before it was possible. (I grew up with phones certainly, was in school when they became 'smart'.)
In a way, we've regressed back before we had the answer machine at our fingertips. You don't really know who's correct. It's just changed from 'Well, I heard xyz from my friend's aunt's sister, so I'm right. Oh yeah! Gary just said the opposite yesterday, so you're wrong' to something a little bit different.
But unfortunately people's brains are fried because of the constant social media bombardment.
Information sharing is an extremely low barrier kind of favor because when I give you some information, I still have it too. When we no longer need each other to learn about that hole in the wall restaurant, that new band, how to fix a leaky sink, we have also lost important tools to forge connections with each other.
I worry a lot that the Internet and cheap consumer goods has essentially knocked the bottom rungs off the ladder of human relationships. I don't need others to find a place to eat or live, or to learn a new skill or hobby. But I do still need them to share my feelings and worries with. But it's really hard to jump straight to the level of relationship where you can talk about those things without going through several rounds of "Hey, can I borrow your drill?" and "Do you remember who voiced Fred Flintstone?"
And yet the best information is still person-to-person, old school. It lives in the cracks that software misses and where review systems are gamed. Finding good Indian food is hard - but the locals know. Who has an open mic night? Hard to say without connections. Maybe the ultimate example is real estate - deep knowledge of any given place comes after you've lived there, and understand it's history, is life. And that's impossible to represent online.
>cheap consumer goods
Yes: making everything in Shenzen is a problem because now it's the only community that knows how to make and fix things. (Obviously its not 100% the case, but its mostly the case.) That lack of distributed ability has follow-on effects that we don't understand yet -- most worryingly having to do with national security, but also about agency and curiosity and self-determination. Maybe we should have to pass a test before being allowed to use any particular object, showing that we at least know how its made and where it's constituent parts come from.
But that was the last chance before you had to wait 25 years for the Dukes of Hazzard DVD box set.
You skipped right over syndication, which is what every series was aiming for (and Dukes of Hazzard definitely attained.)
I remember that the Game of Thrones red wedding event still seemed to happen at the same time even though it was re-watchable on demand.
And now music really knows no bounds.
I'd probably just veer off by mentioning that Sissy Spacek is Rip Torn's cousin (wait! who is Rip Torn? who is Sissy Spacek?)
I set VHS recorder just in case.
It was really a bummer to miss something. It was probably going to be years, or at least seasons, until you got to see it again.
I don't know.
Ok. Another round?
I think that era of having widespread, but not ubiquitous, access to the internet is a time period I would like to have back. For every useful or Maps or food delivery application on my phone, there's three more that steal my attention with an unwanted notification
The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have vanished.
I'm not sure what people prefer more though. Say you're waiting for a date, do you feel best breaking off directly from your reading of the dragon book, or would you feel best just doing nothing until they showed up?
I dunno. Infinite scrolling sure feels like watching paint dry to me... but as a teenager my idea of a good time was finding an isolated bit of woods, and sitting still enough for the fauna to ignore me. Actually, that's still my idea of a good time, but I'm too busy and the woods anywhere nearby are too crowded.
I'm not saying I wouldn't get bored just waiting for extended periods of time, but sometimes it's nice to know that for the next 10 - 20 minutes, you just have to exist in this spot, and that's all that's really expected of you.
I mean I get bored of a game or an article etc. but I would immediately seek refuge in something else that is easy to reach.
Before constant connectivity, I would have attempt to cure my boredom in much more hardcore ways.
Theres several influencers whose whole bit is centered around mixing paint, and I don't know how many channels on youtube dedicated to the sound it makes when you cut sand with a knife. So don't despair, I'm absolutely certain there is a channel out there dedicated to watching paint dry, on demand in byte size vids with tons of userengagement, for those long drives when you just want to pull the plug and watch paint dry.
People weren't necessarily "bored"-- remember that the boredom one feels when not hyper stimulated is due, at least in part, to adaptation to their peak/typical stimulus.
People probably got sufficient dopamine, from "less exciting" things such as small talk, looking at the clouds, contemplating the meaning of their life while waiting for an interview to begin etc.
If all I can do is watch paint dry, I'll find something else, whether it's rewarding or just mindless dopamine.
That said, I'm totally addicted and cutting out the internet is extremely hard when I sit in front of it for work and my computer and phone are where a lot of the rewarding things are too (e.g. cell phone drains time, but you need it to text friends). I feel like an alcoholic working as a bartender also required to take just a teeny sip of whiskey every time I talk to someone.
Sometimes it's good to sit down 15min and rethink stuff
This new song from Bo's covid-lockdown inspired special "Inside" hits this right on head. The Internet, particularly when paired with mobile devices just tries to suck up so much attention, because that's exactly what we made it do.
I do remember however being bored to hell as a teenager, I would not want to live in that world, I really hated it.
I've read far too many cereal boxes and shampoo bottles in my lifetime. Instead of getting annoyed at my unexpected 10 minute wait somewhere, I can just play a game. So many minor annoyances, gone due to the little pocket miracle. I can always choose not to pick it up, after all, but at least I have the choice now.
I've heard this from several generations that the time when you were still under the protection of parents, but not their attention are the "good old days" of your life - like if your biggest worry if you flipped a car was "My dad will kill me!" and not "phew, not a scratch on me & my friends are all alive".
Must be the youth and opportunity of that phase of life rather than the actual era in the world (just look at a "2007 was the best year in video games" for an equivalent for a late millenial).
The music was better, the cereal crunched better, all your friends lived nearby & were always free to hang out, the TV shows were made for your eyes and talking about your dreams was the thing you did without any irony.
Also there was a lot that affected you that you just didn't know yet. You weren't even aware of your ignorance & all knowledge was just within reach.
> I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters.
> Things weren’t fluid and there was no spectrum. I assumed the police were telling the truth. I was unaware of how frequently powerful men answered the door wearing nothing but a towel.
Oh, there was definitely a spectrum (Rain Man came out in the 80s). Rodney King was before the iPhone. LBJ was already showing people how everything in Texas was bigger (Doris Kearns Goodwin has a laugh about it, but we'll never know if she cringed).
I'm too young to remember all this, because it was before my time, but I sort of went into the part 2 of "We didn't start the fire" here.
Now and then I do that, just to switch off from our hyper-connected world. Switching off is the new peace of mind.
Yes, you can use a paper atlas. I have an 8-year-old car with GPS, and a 34-year-old car without. I bought a map book for the 34-year-old car, thinking it'd be a "period accurate" way of driving it; it's anachronistic at best, and frustrating at worst - can you read the street signs, and did you drop your compass under the seat? In the 8-year-old car, I can hit a button, say "Navigate to (an address)" _while driving_, and it figures it out.
Some of these I do on principle (only pay with cash, avoid loyalty cards, etc.), and I accept a compromised UX as a result. Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you get out of these things, but the immediate impact of them seem generally negative.
You can get battery powered compasses that you stick on your dash. :)
My car's review mirror has a compass in it and I use it for navigation quite often.
Places I had to drive to before GPS are places I have a better understanding of how to get to. I have a friend who refuses to use GPS and his knowledge of the city is far far ahead of mine.
Of course I am lucky to live in a place built on a true x-y coordinate grid system where given any address you can navigate to it w/o issue using, well, just a compass. :)
I wouldn't try that trick in London! :) (There is a cool documentary about London cab drivers and what they have/had to go through to memorize the entire city)
Also google corrects car review mirror to rear view. :)
It isn't. You'll just be an anachronism. If the entire world isn't living the same way then you are only getting a superficial experience. Instead of living a genuine life, you are merely pretending for a while.
That's usually the point where I go into my "facebook is spyware" spiel, with predictable results.
Sure, it might still be technically legal to ride a horse down the street. But soon enough, people started putting in multi-lane highways. Also, stores took out their hitching posts. Then we started designing cities around the car, so what used to be a mile away is now 10. And half of that distance is consumed by parking lots.
I haven't ridden a horse since I was 3 or so, but I rode a steam train through town last Sunday, which would be period accurate with your horse, and people smiled. They waved and took photos and thought it was really cool. Which it was.
It isn't practical, as you say, but it is pretty awesome. And because of that people will accommodate you.
But smartphones are delivering no benefit to mankind. At all. The only compelling reason to use them is social pressure.
You know better than that. You don't have to lie to try and make a point.
This statement may be hyperbolic, but at its core is not wrong. Smartphones are very easily a net negative in terms of cost/benefit to society. They're ubiquitous because they're addictive, not because they're so wonderful. Everyone used to smoke too, then we came to see the massive damage cigarettes were doing. Smartphones are just cigarettes for the brain.
The internet is also more than just mindless entertainment and social media. GPS isn’t necessary, but they do more than just find stuff they also route you around traffic accidents and locate the closest drug store on a trip. Downloading an instructional YouTube video really helps with home repair, etc.
In app purchases are toxic, but you can also just download a free chess app no gamification required.
Benefit? Probably not. Social Pressure? I'd say it's mostly the same addictive behavior that's built into slot machines.
There's been a lot of high speed evolution that has gone into modern products. Fast food, social media, the perfection of pop music production. The unsuccessful die off.
All those billions of fools being tricked into using them! I can see an argument that the downsides of social media outweigh the benefits of access to nearly unlimited knowledge, but I don't even agree with that argument. I spent more of my life without smartphones than with, and I still 100% would rather have them than not. The access to the knowledge alone is amazing. Stuck out in the middle of nowhere? A quick google search gets you home. Traveling around in the middle of nowhere without a map isn't actually that great of a life lesson after the first time or two. And I live in the "first world" - the benefits to third world countries are profound.
The OP point doesn't seem to be about moving anything backwards, but moving yourself forward by selectively disengaging from certain things.
My PhD advisor once went to a beach resort with his family. Fifteen days in a remote venue without wifi nor cellphone network. He was the kind of person who replies a saturday midnight mail with an absurdly technical and detailed answer, within less than one hour. I thought it would be torture to him. When he came back he told me that it was the most productive two weeks on his life. He wrote two nearly complete paper drafts and proved several theorems. Some things that he couldn't check on the literature were carefully noted.
After that he realised how absurd and unproductive it is to spend your whole life connected to the email and subject to excessive social pressure. I guess having email-free days, or even mornings, would be a productivity boost to many intellectual jobs (unless your job consists in actually replying to mails).
I've been doing this a fair amount lately, particularly when I go on vacation. It's glorious.
There are some inconveniences, for sure, but the good outweighs the bad. Most of what drives my tech use these days is 1) My job, and 2) The social expectations of others. On balance smartphones and ubiquitous internet have benefits, but the bad far outweighs the good. Unfortunately, once a technology is embraced by enough people, you're more or less forced to use it if you want to live in mainstream society.
I'll fire up a machine for video or photo editing once in a while or sheet music work, but otherwise they're not much use.
One problem is being too old to care about video games. When Space Invaders came out I couldn't imagine that people would choose that over pinball or foosball. My loss I guess.
Ditto for most restaurant menus in a lot of places: they are QR codes now, that point to URLs.
Airlines will only let you book with cards, no cash.
Music is also now almost free and unlimited. Local music died in the early 90s when the telecommunications act was passed and all the local stations got bought and consolidated into national syndicates. Local DJs didn't find bands anymore. There was a real rough spot when the mainstream was dull and it was very hard to find out about alternative music. Later, the internet and Youtube leveled the playing field between the mainstream and everything else and things got better.
Or so I've been told.
I'm a fully grown adult over the age of 40. I don't answer my door if I'm not expecting someone. They can call from my driveway if they want. I don't answer phone calls in general, and hate talking on the phone. Few have issues with this as they understand that house visits and phone calls is me asking you to stop what you are doing and talk to me, someone who is just going to talk about something minor that can wait if you are busy. Email is just a letter, cold and impersonal, and isn't a way to communicate with friends, though I'll use it from time to time if it is my last resort.
I'm sure they'll adapt if smartphones actually went away, but that's not what is going on with your son.
I gotta laugh at this. Being someone that's from a working town and being from a working class family, cops weren't to be trusted. Cops lied even back then. Life wasn't better back then. The fact he seems to mock gender fluidity and polyamory really shows how much has changed for the better. People who didn't fit in with the gender constructs then were out of luck. Either you were forced to be lgb or if you were trans you had to fit the gendered mold; no androgyny unless you're doing it as part of a musical act.
Interesting, I came away with the impression that the author was implying that some of these changes (i.e. better understanding of toxicity, therapy, wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering) to be positive changes to provide more nuance in their post than just a list of raw nostalgia.
The article literally questions that conclusion.
"Were those the good old days? It’s tough to say."
It's as if there were advantages and disadvantages. It's easy to view the past as "good" but the reality, as presented in this article, was really a mixed bag.
I've experienced most of what this blog post describes despite the fact it was after 2000! and when change came it was abrupt and violent, almost like being surrounded by a technological theme-park all of a sudden. It was at times funny to see how some people who have never owned anything more advanced than a CRT tv try to figure out how to use a smart phone, I distinctly remember this one older guy who hit the breaks in the middle of the road then pulled over and got out of his car to receive what must have been one of the first mobile phone calls of his life.
* Too worried to take a picture because I might ran out of film.
* Too worried about screwing up the flash light because I didn't have enough film.
* Recording important things (like my class) was too big of a hassle and too expensive (Not enough tapes).
* SMS was a cost that I always had to worry.
* Books are much lighter now because they are now digital.
* Podcast was such a hassle before because of carrying around tapes.
* Laptop was a thing but nowhere as convenient as a smartphone to look up a reference.
Also - you remembered your friends phone numbers (or had a black book).
Also, if you went out without telling your family where, you became unreachable for the whole day(s). Going dark that way nowadays is almost unthinkable.
A recent example:
George's GF wants a "no phones at dinner" rule. G: "We had a good thing going, Jerry! Now we're supposed to talk? That can only end badly!
It’s also interesting to me that this problem, of storytelling in a world of instant communication, was first addressed in the original Star Trek. Various adventure story tropes had to be adjusted for communicators and transporters. Roddenberry et al admitted it was a headache sometimes.
It had great battery life of up to a week, WiFi, 4G and supported Whatsapp. You could take an occasional snapshot with it's 2MP camera and if you really wanted to, browse the internet on a tiny 2.45" screen. Also you could connect it with you Google account to sync contacts and email.
With these features it allowed me to do the beneficial things you use an internet connected phone for, like staying in touch with my peers and looking for directions. But I was no longer able to mindlessly scroll the internet for hours each day because it was just not possible.
So if you're also not happy with your smartphone usage, I can really recommend you to give a featurephone a try. At ~60€ it is cheap enough to try it for 2 weeks and put it in some drawer if it doesn't work out.
Disclaimer: 1,5 years later I started using a smartphone again because I had a kid and wanted to be able to take better pictures.
[0]: https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-8110-4g/specs
Did people feel the same way when the railroad and other forms of rapid transport showed up?
What makes things feel so different? Is it more competition, and for what? Is it that things are just faster, and the certainties have changed? Has it fundamentally changed how we experience relationships with people?
Are our standards now higher, and is that a good thing?
In the pre-Internet era, rumors, incidents, conspiracies, book and movie opinions were passed on verbally. I saw an article nobody else in my circle ever read; a friend watched a movie nobody else is going to see any time soon, etc. There were endless opportunities to get together and talk.
We were each other's Internets.
Do people talk less these days? I certainly do but that might be due to my age. But I'm genuinely curious if the topics of conversations are as intellectually fulfilling as they used to be.
There might be an argument that our new online/text based discussions have changed the dynamics (some could argue hindered, but I don't) of face to face communication.
It's not the travel, or the time, it's the 'it's more efficient to go thousands of miles out of the way due to logistics.'
This has not been particularly new, but I can still marvel at it.
Having fixed plumbing, I'm reminded that the current iteration is as a result of 2000 years of refinement.
I have a lathe, manufactured in 1966, it still holds tolerances, and I refer to a book (how to run a lathe) that's first printing was at the turn of the 20th century (1912 or thereabouts)
Old stuff is remarkable, too.
I think comparing the advances in mechanical precision to changes in society shaping technological advances is not a fair comparison. I would argue that it's exactly that mechanical precision that started with gauge blocks that has facilitated all our advancements.
I think it's just a different "system of measures" when talking about societal/social impact on our human interactions. People's minds and feelings don't fit into technical descriptions.
But, to agree with you, just like basic technology changes slowly, human nature barely seems to change at all.
One wonders the degree to which our mental health actually thrived better with that extra time, accidental rather than deliberate discovery.
To some extend yes. When I was a kid, we'd rarely go to the only major city in our part of the country. Maybe two times a year. Now I live in that area, but I can easily go visit my parents for dinner, just because someone decided that a motorway was a great idea. It cut somewhere like 40 minutes to an hour of the drive.
It still boggles my mind that 30 years ago we considered it a day trip, but with a shorter distance, faster speeds, in a better car, it's just a quick drive, allowing my daughter to see her grandparents way more often than I saw mine.
So the change in the "underlying" doesn't have to be 10x to have a 10x effect on the relationships.
- Tom Green.
Taken from a rant [1] on this subject from a few years back
SMS feature phones like the sidekick, with physical keyboards, ruled the day and many of my classmates actually disliked smartphones because of the lack of physical keys!
You all had it made. I'm sure any younger person can vouch for the social issues that come along with every teenager having a smartphone, but your cohort also missed out on family-shared landlines and all of the issues attendant with them. Calling your date and finding yourself forced to make small talk with her dad the phone bouncer, for example.
It's great. Engage with others more authentically, more meaningfully, and more consistently.
It may be hard for some people, but if you really want to do it, keep at it and don't give up. Seven generations from now, do you think smartphones will still have this hold on humanity? We just can't continue this way; it's an unsustainable form of society. Even movies made in 2021 do not depict smartphone usage anywhere close to the frequency and intensity they are used now. People will wake up from this collective dream one day; I'd rather wake up now and get started early on building something that works, wouldn't you?
> That last sentence is the most confusing thing I’ve read today, and I still don’t know what you mean by it.
I think ahofmann is referring to people who have a smartphone but not a desktop / laptop or similar.
A dumb phone does less for you now than it did in 2005, just like a horse does less for you now than it did in 1895. Even if you really like horses, you can't ride them on the same streets you once could.
There was a culture of nudging people along to the right place. Even as a kid you would be asked for directions from time to time and have to sort out how many blocks to go before the next turn and all that, often without ever having seen an actual map of your own town.
Some people conflate authenticity for interactions with others who are willing to go way out of their way to spend time with you.
And if the bell rung, well, you were out of luck
As for cameras: I wrote a book "Inventing the Future" about the Xerox Star (1977-1981). No one took pictures then! It's such a drag. I was sure we were on the 3rd floor of the A&E Building, and everyone told me no, it was the 1st floor.
Fortunately, people at Xerox did write documents and many, many of those are up on bitsavers.org.
Once I got my Cleveland Freenet Account I loved popping on after school to check my email (which at that point was really just personal messages from a few friends) and stopping by IRC to chat.
The limiting factor of dinner time and needing to free up the phone lines was great to limit daily use.
Snowden’s _Permanent Record_ did a nice job capturing this feeling for those around 40.
* Being fully into a stimulating conversation with friends for an hour or more, without constant interruptions for people to check their phones and then change the subject to something irrelevant and mildly infuriating.
* Being able to go for random/spontaneous drives with my family in the car and negotiate where we're going next without having to pull over to update Google Maps or hear the phone bark "Make a U-Turn" a zillion times until I do.
* Looking forward to social interactions being events where I enjoy doing things I like with people whose company I value, instead of a constant stream of bullshit, dueling ego trips, and disconnected conversations where both parties spend more time correcting the other person about what they meant than actually saying something.
* Waking up in the morning earlier than planned, full of energy, then sipping my coffee slowly as the sun rises, because I got good, restful sleep last night.
* Not having to face surprise criticism about something I said X days ago, because most of my statements are verbal, only reach the people they were intended to reach, and are not preserved after that.
* Not having to spend more time taking pictures of an activity than actually doing the activity.
* Not being in a constant state of annoyance all the time due to a distinct lack of time spent correcting typos, fat-fingering menus, waiting on things to load, and dismissing popups.
* Tasting true solitude (not just alone time) once in a while.
I could go on and on.
I guess the wisdom here is to know yourself and your limits and whether you have an addictive personality.
When we were kids, the goto story about kidnapping was "The Ransom of Red Chief"... why in the world would someone want to take a kid?
There was only one kind of mail, and it was delivered every day except Sunday, and national holidays.
I’m not a zealot of old times but if we are honest with ourselves we realize that most new stuff is crap. 90% somebody said. Few changes are net improvements.
But I appreciate the balance of the author, reminding us that there were shortcomings: always trusting police comes to mind.
I was exposed to more conspiracy theories in my youth (80s-90s) than today, and like today, scientists were trusted as long as they didn't put your preconceived ideas into question.
The difference is that conspiracy theories used to spread undercover. So you may not know about them all, but when they reach you, they are more convincing, as if you were given access to secret knowledge, and also, debunking was more difficult. Now they are for everyone to see, but it doesn't mean people believe them, especially considering that the debunking is just as assessible.
I think it is what I would call the "people are idiots" fallacy. You always assume you are smarter than "people". Because you are smart, you don't believe in whatever bullshit there is on the internet, but "people" are dumb, so they must believe it the second they get exposed to it, and in some cases, they do, but there is often more than stupidity. But I think that generally, people are smart, and except for a minority, if you can tell obvious bullshit, so can them. As for non-obvious bullshit, it is true people sometimes fall for it but so do you and me, but I don't think that's what the author means by "tinfoil theories".
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"I bought solid products and I expected them to last more than a couple years. I didn't hear my friends say that for the environment, they changed their fridge only every 2 years and a half. I didn't like all the advertising in the street or on TV, but at least I was in peace at home. I could listen for a CD in my living room peacefully, without an add in between each song or even in the middle. I had heard about kids working in African mines, but what could I do about it? I didn't have an object in my pocket that has a direct impact on them, as well as on the pollution of my county's main river because of the chip manufacture. It's not that I absolutely need this object, it's that it is very convenient (and everybody has one anyways, and they make fun of me if I don't)."
Please a good writer make it sound more friendly :)
I have to admit I often go on reddit when I have some time, but I don't go on instagram or facebook.
Sharing videos on whatsapp when you're in rural areas is crazy, and to me it's really pointless, even though I like technologies.
It's hard to say if people are less social because of smartphones, since social networks are not so social after all.
Although I'm really curious if avoiding digital social networks would result in an amputated real social life. Online dating really really allowed me to get out more, and I don't feel like there is a good enough equivalent for friendships and activities.
Also regarding the news being 'non-breaking':
Uhm... Watergate? Kennedy? Maybe Apollo? And so on...
Returning to these kinds of adhoc social interactions has be instrumental in helping breaking my isolation and depression. Friendly chit chat with a barista, say hello to anyone who isn't obviously avoidant, asking to pet their dog etc.
Not wearing headphones has also been an important thing because it means I'm instantly available for interaction if someone should say something, or if I want to.
So trail talk has been reduced to nearly zero. I call out "On your left!" as I pass, but still folks can be startled as I drift past. And forget saying "Good morning!" and getting a response.
It will take years to undo the changes done by this past year.
I take that remark as part of the regression itself - "I'm not as social as before and that's ok because reasons!" It's sad.
> I didn’t think about wage gaps,
I think that this and other similar examples are confusing the Internet and smartphone
[1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25390-i-m-a-modern-man-a-ma...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902728
Hacker News discussion:
I did relate to it though. It would be apt for a video about things you'd only understand if you're a millennial.
Not really the main theme of this article, but I guess I do lack the courage of approaching a woman for her number and asking her out these days. Can't imagine how hard that is in real life.
"Everything was better in the past."
It's also closely related to declinism.
A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc.
I think cherry picking negative aspects of today's world and compare it to positive aspects of the past draws a very subjective picture of how the past was.
--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2020/06/20/things-kee...
From what I've seen, there's not a lot of people who don't gain a fair bit of psychological wellness from turning off their phone for a week.
I see smartphones as a trade off: productivity for happiness.
I have had iPads since the beginning. They run 80%-90% of smartphone apps. So I am well acquainted with their potential.
Clearly not everyone had a Reader’s Digest subscription like my family did.
Loved this.
Propaganda like a drum, like in one of those movies with those slaves on the oars in the basement of a ship.
I also used to think having a decent digital Camera on a phone would be insanely great. It turns out not so, at least not any more. Every single god damn digital photo are now either some stupid "computational" photography enhanced, some are enhanced with AI or whatever Machine Learning. Apple used to be on the realistic camp but now even they are joining the profile of instagram generation. ( I have been told customer want these sort of features as they think it is better photo, and sell better ) And if that is not enough most of them are posted with some editing or filters. To the point nothing in the photo I saw is real.
I remember dreaming about online MMO on a phone. That was UO / World of Warcraft era. May be in ten to fifteen years time a Pocket Computer with Wireless Network. That would be so much fun. But gaming now has becomes a casino with lots of gambling options to win the game. It is also time sink for many of us to escape into the "metaverse". ( Metaverse is the new VC hype of 2021 ). They are no longer the same.
I remember I really really wanted IRC, ICQ and later MSN on a Smartphone. It didn't work. I have to hack an O2 Atom ( made by HTC before they become a brand of itself they used to be a ODM like Foxconn ) and it was a battery drain. Now it is largely replaced by all sort of instant messenger. But we dont give ICQ numbers or your MSN handle to anyone anymore. It is all "phone" numbers. So it is more of a "real world" connection rather than some "Internet identity" we used to have.
Speaking of O2 Atom, I have been looking for a smartphone, or a pocket computer that uses 2G GPRS as Data Connection and slowly browse the Internet on the street. So I could sit in a Cafe and use some remote server that will send me the .MHT version of a website so I only use one connection. ( Multiple connection on GPRS are bound to fail ). iPhone was everything I wanted I remember vividly how Apple nailed it. From capacitive Touch Screen to all the small UX. Most people didn't get it. As it wasn't the first "Smartphone", you have Nokia Symbian and something like the Sony Ericsson P900 at the time. Most people were like Steve Ballmer and laughing at it. But for those who were looking for it for so long. iPhone was "it".
I would have thought with Smartphone, people would listen to even more music, as it replaces mp3, or MiniDisc. Where we curate our own collection very carefully to try and fit in how tiny amount of storage we had. Turns out people are consuming more Video and other forms of Media. Music isn't "dead", but it certainly didn't bloom like many expected. From a high level prospective, all forms of media are competing for your attention and time.
> I had no influence and never disrupted anything. Strangers did not wish me a happy birthday or “Like” me. My personal brand was invisible.
> I did not take photos of myself, was not filtered
These things have always been happening; society just previously only had enough resources to set its scorching eye on politicians, nobles, and celebrities, in such a way as to force these thoughts and behaviors as reaction. Now there's enough attention for everybody, whether they like it or not.
> There was no surveillance of the streets.
Sure there was. It was just the unreliable and biased eye-witness kind of surveillance. One of the main purpose of the "city guard" was patrolling and noting down suspicious behavior.
Pre-globalization, many large cities would by default have border walls and border checks, where you'd have to state your purpose of visit and get your entry/exit recorded in a logbook.
Also, there were a lot of curfews. Curfew laws used to be pretty common, enabling city guards to treat anyone who is out at night as a de-facto criminal, enabling immediate search-and-seizure.
> News was not breaking
Sure it was. There was less space to fill, and so "breaking news" was limited to things of wider relevance, but it still happened, and still spread quickly. Even pre radio, there was "breaking news" in newspapers, pushed into the edition at the last minute. The whole value-prop of the telegraph was to spread "breaking news."
> The only content users generated was letters to the editor.
Depending on the era, you're forgetting about:
• Usenet
• Public-access television
• Call-in radio shows
• Open-participation scientific journals and "societies of letters"
Also, people could just sit down and write a book. Or, more likely, a memoir. The interesting ones would eventually get discovered and published, if perhaps post-humously.
> I rarely got to feel outraged by the words of people I’d never met.
They were there, in books/memoirs. People who read a lot of this generally made a career (in Literary Criticism) out of it.
> The only bingeing I did involved alcohol. I’d wait an entire week to watch the next episode.
You could have been binging serial novels!
> acquaintances never asked me to finance their ... back surgery
Sure they did; they likely did it through by presenting their problem to the local church, who then asked you to donate on their behalf. They're still doing that, in fact. GoFundMe is communal charity for non-religious people.
> I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters.
People have been talking about all of these things (perhaps under different names) for centuries. They're hard to avoid, in fact, if you read the writings of "statesmen" of previous eras.
> My desk’s height did not adjust; I just sat in a chair and took it.
You could have just had one short desk and one tall one. Or a writing desk. Most people didn't, though. The real modern difference is a self-interested motivation to have good ergonomics.
> butts that were incapable of functioning as shelves.
Such butts certainly existed; they were just not evenly distributed. :)