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Comment by anotherhue | Hacker News Reader

Smartphones. Purely consumption devices changed the balance to be more producer/consumer than collaborator.

The world is on board now so rapid tech changes aren't possible to market.

There's still crazy/genius if you look for it, but hobbyist only in most cases. NixOS, Urbit, any DHT or CRDT system, VR, Graal, WASM, mesh nets like ygssadril.

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> Purely consumption devices

I don't understand how this sentiment is still so common on HN. It's plainly false.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the vast majority of computer-aided personal creative work happens, in whole or part, on a smartphone—it's just that most of it's audio-visual and largely for personal wants and needs, so HN doesn't think that counts, I guess?

I only have a smartphone for those things. Do I browse HN and other crap on it? Yeah, of course. Would I buy it if it the only things it could do, aside from calls and texts, was watch Internet videos and browse the web? Hell. No. The GPS, the camera, the mic & speakers (it's my tuner when I play music!), and so on, are what sell it to me. I am 100% sure I'm far from unique in this. It also remote-controls my thermostats, acts as my document scanner completely replacing other forms of scanner for me, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting about right now. It's my still and video camera, for all purposes.

"But using the GPS, tuner, et c. is still kinda consumption!" BS. Tools aren't about "consumption". Not the way people seem to mean it when they sneer at smartphones (and usually tablets, too).

I'd extend that to smartphones, a tracking-based ad industry, and digital media sales.

Digital media sales provided serious, multiply-Apple's-stock-price levels of new revenue into the tech industry. Same with adtech for Google.

The smartphone enabled them to physically target an entirely new population of users.

Then both companies eventually evolved towards the bulk of their revenue, as all companies do.

(The more recent X-for-Y trends were a consequence of money being cheap and startups taking advantage. That will take care of itself)

I would argue smartphones are one of the best all-in-one devices for creating...most people just don't use it that way.

The hardware is awesome, it's the social stuff around them that make them useless.

When I setup a new iPhone, I do not think I am forced to expose myself to any social stuff other than SMS/MMS/Phone calls. And I think those can be disabled too, or at least the notifications.

Is it their fault? The software tries every trick in the book (and some new ones) to steal your attention.

I disagree about the creation utility from a quality perspective, lack of ergonomics while filming, bad mics, etc. But there's no question the availability of the device is astonishing.

The old addage: "the best camera is the one you have with you".

I actually bought cheap modern camcoder and it's obvious that it's descendant of old line of purpose made devices. It does one job but does it very well.

I'm genuinely intrigued, because I seethe with rage just trying to use the keyboard and guestures on smartphones and I can't really imagine trying to actually code or write or sketch on it.

With zero video editing experience, I recently shot and edited a 7 minute video of myself playing guitar, entirely on my iPhone. I was pretty surprised how well it worked. Yeah there were some UI warts (editing text, like you say...), and I wouldn't want to work that way for any serious work, but it really did lower the barrier for a complete noob in a way that finding/buying some PC video editing suite couldn't.

You say you wouldn't want to use this simplified phone-based video editing tools for serious work, but there is an entire industry's worth of livelihoods being made on TikTok and Instagram using these very editing tools. Not saying this to knock down your point or anything, just highlighting the fact that these tools have actually become good enough (sure, no one is editing feature-length Hollywood movies using them) to be qualified as "serious work".

yeah, consumption devices that turned tech into boutique sure put a dent in my care for where it’s going. Some of it has led to improvements no doubt but much of it is just obsession and consumerism i would be happier without.

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