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Comment by vouaobrasil | Hacker News Reader

> this wearable computer promises to free you from your smartphone.

Here's an even more effective solution: stop using your smartphone! After I stopped using my phone, I realized it had almost no value except some diversionary value that was actually just a distraction in disguise. I still have to use it at times such as 2FA, but other than that I rarely use it.

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It might be an age thing (late 20s), but I can assure I would have absolutely zero social life if I didn’t have my phone — all planning, catch ups, bar hangouts, exchanging numbers while travelling and many more things initiate through one or another app. It sucks in some levels, but also not really possible to function without it, at least for me.

That is how technology forces itself into life: first optional, then mandatory. It's a prisoner's dilemma, and it leads to a sequence of local maxima that are descending and making life on average worse.

What do you use to communicate with other humans?

Mouth. Email and social media still work great on desktops/tablets too!

You can speak to them directly.

"Last minute change folks, the venue is totally full. We're going to go somewhere else. Fred is still riding in on his penny-farthing -- who wants to call him to let him know? not it"

Email on a computer? Voice and in person? A telephone that you plug into a wall?

Got it. So you don't use things like WhatsApp. I find WhatsApp and Signal incredibly useful and are probably the biggest reason I use a smart phone.

I find those useful too, but use them 99% on a desktop PC. Phone use is relegated to scenarios where there's a message that I'm expecting or need to send that can't wait until I'm home.

I mean you could still achieve the same thing with an iPhone that's just always kept in Do Not Disturb...

Nope. Not at all. The phone is an invasive technology that creeps new features even if its on Do Not Disturb. It has a default set of icons of "Apps" that I don't want to see. I don't want to see a "Podcast" icon or a "Messaging" icon. Nor do I want to go through the trouble of turning it off. New updates may add new distractions that I don't want to see, and in some places, there are "Emergency Alerts" that make an annoying sound even in DND mode.

Phones can be used as a tracking device, and are much more likely to be used as such since everyone carries them around.

Buying a phone also supports the phone industry, that I do not want to support. It supports more mining and the disposable electronics industry. (Computers are more useful and if you install Linux on them, you can make them last for much longer than a phone.)

Well you are perfectly free to live your tinfoil hat life without buying one, I guess.

That's a lot of money to spend on such a simple use case.

"Talking to people" is hardly an insignificant use case

When you can do the same on a computer you likely already own, or on a $50 dumbphone it's an expensive solution to a simple problem.

Here's a hot take: most people (hell, me included) don't want to stop using their smartphone.

Of course not, because it's an addiction. Drug users say the same.

It's a portable computer that does a bunch of useful things. I really don't understand the fraught relationship some people have with their phones. Just don't install social media apps and other time-wasters?

Or maybe because it's an incredibly useful device that provides an interface to almost everything in modern life.

It's only useful because communites and local resources have first been destroyed by technology. After that, technology produces things to make us dependent on it. Modern life is a disaster as all of it is based on destroying the biosphere with unsustainable technological growth.

And here you are on Hacker News.

Of course. I come here to express my view about technology, and refine my arguments against it. What better place than the lion's den?

Is that what you imagine yourself to be doing here? - refining an argument? Thus far in this thread you seem struggling even to make one. The repeated insistence that, rather than participate in society, people prefer a remote cabin in Montana and all correspondence by parcel post, doesn't come close to qualifying.

Thanks for your feedback.

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