Should We Decouple Technology from Everyday Life? | Hacker News Reader

Should We Decouple Technology from Everyday Life?

thepublicdiscourse.com

82 pointsStatsAreFun108 comments

I recently won a water bottle in a raffle.

It looked nice, stainless steel, big (probably 2 liters). When I unwrapped it, I saw a QR code that said "Instructions." Weird, why would I need instructions for a water bottle? Then I saw a large rubber plug in the bottom.

I realized with horror, it's a bluetooth enabled heating/cooling element controlled by an app I'm supposed to download. The heating element is huge, takes up half the volume of the bottle. So now this water bottle:

1. Needs power. 2. Needs an app. 3. Has less water capacity.

All so it can just do the same thing as a normal insulated bottle and some ice cubes.

> a normal insulated bottle

Anyone who hasn't already experienced a good vacuum-insulated water bottle, you're in for a treat.

Warning: Normally, when you pour hot coffee or tea into a mug, it cools significantly within a minute. But put it in an insulated bottle for the first time, and it might surprise burn your tongue half an hour later. (Or maybe I was the only one who didn't anticipate this.)

  > might surprise burn your tongue half an hour later.

A *good* vacuum-insulated bottle should be able to do this 90 minutes later. I have some non expensive ones that will keep my tea hot for over 10hrs. Not warm, I mean hot. Even a cheap $10 thermos brand thermos will do at least 6 hrs. They even frequently have cups as caps. I'm sensitive to heat and always need 5 minutes after pouring it into the cup, hours after making my tea.

We're so good at keeping liquids hot it's crazy. If you can't either drink your liquid in 10 hrs or get to a microwave within that time, you're looking for a pretty niche product and a self heating bottle isn't it.

I have a small flask - about the volume of a cup of coffee - made by Kinto. It can deliver those surprise burns hours after filling. It’s almost too good, and has been relegated to long road trips or post-surf coffee where I know it’ll be >3 hours before I want to drink it.

A large vacuum bottle with ice cubes on a hot summers day is hard to beat too.

If you want to burn your tongue many hours later, prewarm the bottle by filling with boiling water before filling with your coffee.

I swear my Zojirushi travel mug defies the laws of physics.

Reminds me of the first time I had a car with a slow-motion-open glove box.

Maybe that's cool, if you're showing off how Old Money fills the hours of their do-nothing lives? Vs. if you have a job, a family, and often too-few hours in your busy days? NO. I don't travel in a horse-drawn coach paced by footmen, either.

When I wash my car, I push the seat forward and backward to vacuum. I like having electrically adjustable seats, but that's one time I'd prefer the older-style lever. Similarly, I saw a self-defense video where if someone hides in your back seat and puts something around your neck, you can lean the seat back QUICKLY in an escape maneuver; impossible with electric seats.

I think if escaping from garrotting is something you should consider when buying a car, you are better off sitting in the backseat and let someone else drive you around :)

Better to have the knowledge and never need it :-)

Probably a heating element to reheat the coffee or tea. I have recently considered need something like a reheating lunchbox so I don't have to use the office microwave which is always gross. I just carry a huge Zojirushi insulted water bottle for my hot water need. I don't want to lose any water capacity...

> Probably a heating element to reheat the coffee or tea.

People reheating coffee and tea should be put to jail

Why not just clean the microwave? Your coworkers would probably appreciate it.

That's gotta be someone else's job!

--everyone

I mean yeah but if you clean it, they won't think that. And if you mention you cleaned it, they'd be more inclined to do it in the future.

And, worse case scenario, you spend like 5 minutes occasionally doing it and now have access to a clean microwave, without needing to buy more e-waste and encouraging the production of cheap, stupid things like a water bottle with a heater in it.

> if you mention you cleaned it, they'd be more inclined to do it in the future

Alternatively, if you mention you cleaned it, they'd be more inclined to say that you're the one who cleans it.

When I got this job years ago, this microwave is beyond cleanable... I think everyone is just avoiding it at this point and go across the building to use a different microwave, which is also pretty gross tbh. I thought about cleaning it, but then again I don't wanna, you know, die.

I'm very much a "fix it yourself" kinda person but I might yell at you if you said this to me. Why? Because I'm cleaning up after you. Why don't YOU clean YOUR mess? Maybe it's one person creating most of the mess (Pareto is a bitch), make them do it. Or we pay cleaning staff, pay them more to do it, I'm sure it's less than you're paying me to do it. It's probably cheaper to buy a new microwave every month than pay me to clean it lol

You pass responsibility to someone who isn't responsible. You don't recognize this function repeats and people become over burdened. Sure "It's not a big deal" but that's in isolation. That's one time, one task. These things don't just add up, they compound

>1. Needs power. 2. Needs an app. 3. Has less water capacity.

It's like someone looked at The Homer [1] and thought "that's solid engineering sensibility."

[1] https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer

It was the rack and peanut steering that sold me on it.

I don't know if I'd want that in a water bottle, since most high quality ones will maintain temperature for a long time. That said, I love my Ember "smart" coffee mug which keep coffee hot despite being open air. At the same time, I don't use any of the smart features. You can tweak things via Bluetooth, but I just keep it in default mode (ditto for my Oral-B iO9 toothbrush)

It's a horrible product, but it also sounds like a fun thing to reverse engineer and possibly use in some maker project (without the app, of course).

I don't have a problem with technology. I have a problem with technology trends that are irrational.

For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. A smart phone menu is just stupid.

I want to decouple stupidity away from technology. That's not possible though. Most places where I worked... just a exploring the code for a couple minutes I encounter something stupid. So it's an impossible endeavor. Stupidity is intrinsic to humanity and since humanity builds technology, stupidity is therefore intrinsic to technology.

A good example of this is the glovebox on the Tesla Model 3. There's no button to open it with. Instead you have to press a button on the steering wheel to activate Google Assistant, then say "open glovebox" in a clear voice so it doesn't misunderstand, then wait a second or two, and then finally the glovebox opens. It bothers us to no end.

Incredible. This sounds like an ideological decision rather than a design decision.

> In The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman discusses how poorly designed doors—often called "Norman doors"--fail to communicate whether they should be pushed or pulled. A well-designed door should naturally indicate how it operates through affordances (such as a push plate vs. a pull handle) and signifiers (like labels or arrows). This concept is part of a broader discussion on human-centered design and usability.

At a minimum, a poorly designed door can be opened!

I mean, the point that a physical button (even if it were backed by software, due to the PIN code lock feature) would be appreciated certainly resonates, but it's at least somewhat better than that ;P... open the menu--which probably defaults to Controls; but, if not, click Controls--and then there's a giant Glovebox button.

So three taps instead of one button. Exactly the problem with many other Tesla's controls, like defogging, for example. (At least they did have the sense to put control buttons on the steering wheel to which they have added some functionality.)

Tesla does get a lot of little things right -- auto sensing for seat and steering wheel heating, auto-setting seats to your profile as you enter the car based on your phone, automatically setting/unsetting the emergency break when you park, auto locking the doors when you leave, etc. But its "thou shalt not have physical buttons" dogma is annoying. The other thing I miss is the absence of a HUD right in front of you. Again, feels like dogma rather than good design. Other brands (BMW, Polestar, etc.) succeed in that regard (my favorite being the BMW where it projects the HUD onto the bottom of the windshield right where it doesn't obstruct the view but is extremely convenient.

I don't dislike the Tesla but even if Elon wasn't going full fascist, I'd pick another brand next time.

Strong disagree on Alexa. Maybe it's the way I talk, but I find voice assistants wildly inconsistent. There's nothing more frustrating than having to repeat yourself to a robot.

Maybe AI will improve the situation in the next few years, but I'm not convinced.

Alexa - when it works - can do things that cannot be done better in a different ways. There are times when turning on a light or unlocking a door with a phone is better than the alternatives as well. However there are a lot of times where the 100+ year old way of doing the task is better.

Even if voice assistants worked perfectly every time they would still be worse than the switch by the door for controlling the light as you enter/leave. However if you are in bed it may be that despite the current annoyances Alexa is better for controlling the same light.

But "The Clapper" would do just as well in the case where you are in bed, and is less complex, less expensive, and doesn't send your claps to the cloud.

"Clapper set lights to red." I like to set the temperature of the lights to a single color at night so as to not mess up my circadian rhythms. Looks like clapper fits the bill.

God only knows, you might get your wish. They're probably planning a revamp of the Clapper with built-in AI as we speak.

which might or might not be good enough. Alexa can turn on other lights, play various types of music, give you the weather... Depending on what you want this might be worth it.

Home automation systems (Home assistant, openhab...) are making good progress on local only voice control as well.

In this case Siri not Alexa, but it does horribly at interpreting kids' speech. No end of frustration for my 8 year old who wants to play music on our HomePod.

Agreed. But repeating your self is an unintentional artifact. when it works it’s beautiful.

The phone app is just annoying by design.

I wouldn't mind it so much, if it benefited me in any way. Phones are listening all the time, Google and Apply know where I am constantly, they all have access to all my credit card purchases. Why can't I ask arbitrary questions I know they have the data to answer. Some examples of things I feel like should be trivial:

> Hey Google, when's the last time I bought gas for my truck? What did I pay, and how many MPG did I get?

> Hey Siri, the other day at the bar, my friend was telling me about a TV show he recommended I watch. What was the name of the show again? What service streams it? Play the trailer on the living room TV.

Instead, they just harvest all the data, sell it to whoever they feel like, just so everyone can show me intrusive adds for shit I don't care about.

> For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights. A smart phone menu is just stupid.

I'm not sure that's true. A physical button only works if I'm near that button. Alexa only works if I'm near a microphone (and comfortable with that microphone). Whereas my smartphone is always in my pocket, and therefore always useful.

That's not to say a button isn't also useful - it's usually more convenient if I'm already next to that button, which makes it great for turning room lights on and off if I'm moving from room to room. But if I'm on the sofa and I want to dim the lights without having to get up, the smartphone, for me, seems like the most practical choice.

I suspect what seems like stupidity to you may often be people catering to those with different desires and needs. Just because a smartphone isn't a useful way of controlling lights for you, doesn't mean that it's a stupid design decision for everyone.

>Whereas my smartphone is always in my pocket, and therefore always useful.

Sure. Now how long does it take you? Take that phone out of your pocket, unlock it, open the lights app, skip past whatever update/ad/welcome screen, find the correct light button and press it. Anything on a smartphone takes substantially longer than a physical button.

Not to mention that the physical button tends to be more reliable at doing what it's supposed to. People still buy alarm clocks and then put their phone next to it at night.

>Not to mention that the physical button tends to be more reliable at doing what it's supposed to.

This is the big problem with "smart" devices. They take an existing reliable solution to a problem (e.g., flicking a switch to turn on a light), sprinkle on some nice-to-have whiz-bang features (e.g., doing it from afar), but compromising the initial reliable solution in the process.

If those extra features were strictly optional and additive, then it wouldn't be a problem. But that's not how it works in practice.

I completely agree, but like I said, I don't always have the physical button next to me. Having a device that can always do the same as that physical button (at the cost of being more complex to use and taking longer to do any individual action) is a worthwhile tradeoff in some situations.

It's not the right tradeoff for everyone or at all times (there's a good reason why physical switches are the default in most homes!) but it's a useful feature. It is by no means irrational, as the previous poster was suggesting: it was designed with a lot of rationality to suit a use-case that that poster may not have.

> Now how long does it take you?

Rather less time than it takes you, apparently. My process is: pull phone from pocket, swipe down, tap button.

I don't need to unlock it as a discrete step because it did that automatically when it saw my face. I use the built-in smart-home management, so all the controls are available in the system-level control center widget -- which doesn't have any sort of junky updates / ads / welcomes.

It's certainly slower than pressing a physical button if I'm standing next to one. But it's genuinely faster than standing up and walking over to press said button.

I can still use light switches to turn off my lights. I can also turn them all on or off at once, change the brightness, color, and temperature. Smart light are great, I'm sorry they confuse you.

My favorite thing about them is having a "good night" automation. When I get into bed I run it, and it turns off any lights that're still on in my house and locks the doors.

I just tell Alexa or Google home to do set the temperature and change the color. Superior technology less hassle.

It has nothing to do with me not being able to set it up. It more has to do with the stupidity of the user interface of pulling my phone out of my fucking pocket, navigating to the app, navigating to the menu and picking the lights and the color and flipping it.

That depends on what you want to do. If you want to control one specific light in a large room the phone app may be best - try to explain to google which light you mean.

Most people don't have such a complex setup that this ever comes into play. However if you have a stage in your house (not a movie theater, a full stage) you would want that level of control. There are probably a few dozen such houses in the US.

> A smart phone menu is just stupid.

You could try Simple X Mobile: https://sxmo.org/

> For example the smart phone. A physical button or even alexa is easier to turn off the lights.

These aren’t mutually exclusive.

I usually press the physical button for my lights but it’s great to be able to pull out my smartphone and turn off lights across the house, or even in the same room if I’m doing something like holding a baby who is falling asleep.

Putting the common light controls on easily accessible phone widget screens is really easy these days.

I think people who get irrationally angry at the ability to control things from a phone are missing out at this point. You don’t have to use it or buy it, but I’ve derived a lot of value from it.

> Stupidity is intrinsic to humanity and since humanity builds technology, stupidity is therefore intrinsic to technology

This is a deeply cynical and unhappy way to navigate life.

IMO it's about the question: Does it add utility and value, and does it take away functionality for silly reasons like profitability for someone else?

Like, one or two things really make me consider getting into the whole smart home stuff: Turning down the heating when windows are open. Or, controlling a couple of things when I'm not at home (aka my phone isn't on the local WIFI) - turn on the ambient light if it's late/dark and I'm at home, and turn it off otherwise. This would probably add phone controls to stuff, I guess. However, I would very much want these smart features to be "on top" of regular physical control.

But then there are also things like internet connected fridges, or cars playing ads. It'd be nice if my fridge could ping me if the internal temp is rising - though a loud obnoxious beep might work too, but it doesn't need to be internet capable to serve me ads.

>This is a deeply cynical and unhappy way to navigate life.

And deeply true. Here’s the thing I feel a lot of people think happiness is all that matters. What about truth and reality?

My claim is that stupidity being intrinsic to humanity is fucking absolutely true. It has nothing to do with cynicism. I’m baffled at how people don’t even argue the veracity of the claim they just claim it’s “unhappy” as if being delusional is the better alternative.

> I think people who get irrationally angry at the ability to control things from a phone are missing out at this point. You don’t have to use it or buy it, but I’ve derived a lot of value from it.

I work at a place where there are no keys. To unlock a door you have to use your smart phone. Imagine if they did that for lights. I rent an apartment with no physical switches and they force you to use your smart phone. Infuriating. I think if you were rational you would know I’m talking about smart phones in place of physical switches not smart phones paired in addition to physical switches in situations where you have no choice to use it.

> I work at a place where there are no keys. To unlock a door you have to use your smart phone. Imagine if they did that for lights. I rent an apartment with no physical switches and they force you to use your smart phone. Infuriating. I think if you were rational you would know I’m talking about smart phones in place of physical switches not smart phones paired in addition to physical switches in situations where you have no choice to use it.

I don't think that's so rational — I assumed that you were talking about smartphones in addition to existing switches and other tools, rather than completely replacing them. I have genuinely never heard of such a thing, and if you've had to experience that, then I agree with you that that is an insane concept that doesn't need to exist.

The place where I've seen this happen is the bay area. At least two companies I worked at exclusively only allowed phones to unlock doors.

The problem I see is that technology is not made for human life, it is made for money. Money was supposed to be the proxy, not the whole enchilada. There's so much low hanging fruit that will never get fixed because it has low monetary value but would help daily life. It's a lot of the little things that add up and compound. But you can't nickel and dime your way up because it's small things in big controlled platforms.

I'll give an example. At my university each term we do a "survey" to communicate what we want to teach. It has such brilliant questions as "for what academic year" that has a single option and "what you previously taught". There is no caching, so you answer these questions over and over.

Or how about every time I import a calendar I get a new copy of a holiday calendar and this doesn't automatically merge.

There's a million things like these that are small but take tons time and add frustration. They are small but they add up and combine. A million things that take 0.1s but you do every day will still take up your entire day. It just seems we get more and more of this while we're trying to make the next big thing but can never do when we think one quarter at a time

Maybe this is a privileged outlook, but I've decided that each piece of technology needs to earn its place in my life, and I'm going to use it deliberately for a specific purpose, if I deem it to be worthy. The smartphone has not earned it yet.

Im not going to live in an apartment that requires a smartphone to get into the door. That may involve me making sacrifices, I don't care. You have to draw a line somewhere. If parking somewhere requires an app, or eating at a restaurant requires a QR code, I'm just going to go somewhere else. I'm not going to chain myself to a smartphone just because society is addicted. Just like I didn't take up smoking back when everyone around me smoked. And when I do need to use my phone, I pick it up, use it for a purpose, and then put it down. No idle, passive scrolling allowed. No notifications. DND mode 24/7. It is not allowed to interrupt me with a call or a message. When I stop work, the phone goes in a drawer until tomorrow. When I go on vacation, the phone gets packed deep in the emergency baggie, or just not brought at all. This autonomy requires a little sacrifice, and stings a little if you're not used to it. But, ultimately I think it's better for my health, both physical and mental.

> If parking somewhere requires an app, or eating at a restaurant requires a QR code, I'm just going to go somewhere else.

I always hated this kind of technology use. I love technology when it is used to do things that were not possible before or hard to accomplish. I hate QR codes, but even they can be handy at times (without the QR code I would have never encountered the DB ICE Portal for example).

The examples you brought up are small but ubiquitous enough to be extremely annoying. Instead of getting a few printed menus on the table, everybody on the table spends 10 minutes being glued to their phones, zooming and scrolling around to make sense of the offer and select something. Instead of just being able to pull a parking ticket at a meter I have to figure out which of the damn apps I have to use to pay for my parking. And with scammers almost always being smarter then the service providers, I now also have to make sure that I don't fall for "Quishing" scams [1] (honestly no clue if that is as thing elsewhere)

[1]: German: https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/digitale-welt/phis...

> Instead of getting a few printed menus on the table, everybody on the table spends 10 minutes being glued to their phones, zooming and scrolling around to make sense of the offer and select something.

Great example, phones are absolutely terrible for navigating menus. I really struggle when I can’t have all of the info presented to me at once - I just get lost scrolling around and juggling options in my short term memory.

My eyes can scan a large page much faster than my fingers can scroll a small screen.

Great lessons to be learned from the Amish. This is basically what they do, just the decision is made as a community rather than per individual.

The big differentiator for me is "Does this use of technology solve a problem?" I do have a smartphone, FWIW, but it's a tool. And granted, one of it's uses is to kill spare minutes while I'm waiting for someone in a car, or riding public transport somewhere, but that is a choice. I am consciously choosing to partake in social media as a distraction because I have nothing else going on.

In response to your examples here:

> Im not going to live in an apartment that requires a smartphone to get into the door.

110% agreed. I think some kind of smart lock or maybe an RFID thing is just a door lock that is far more error-prone than it needs to be. No reason for it.

> If parking somewhere requires an app

These I can like. The problem is you inevitably run into the problem you always run into: a given app provider is almost certainly not your local municipality, and you have no idea which provider a given area will have chosen to accomplish this. If this could be standardized into one provider, operating as a utility, that simply works everywhere in the United States, that would be fucking brilliant. Just pull up to any public owned lot or stall, scan a QR code, select how long you're parking, and be auto-billed according to pre-set preferences.

But of course that's not the real experience. You have to download a new app for any given place, set it up with an account, another password you're almost certainly going to forget, give yet another nameless corporation your personal details and payment information and fuck knows how they're going to store them, and repeat this process wholesale the next time you have to park somewhere else. That's maddeningly stupid.

> eating at a restaurant requires a QR code

Perhaps controversial, I think this is okay. Especially if it's the type of restaurant where the menu frequently changes, I think this is honestly a good move. It saves a bunch of paper from being thrown out constantly and gives the staff one less thing to need to juggle as they seat patrons. And QR scanning and opening a web-link is essentially built-in functionality to any smart phone made in the last 5 years or so.

Now, if you scan a link and you need to download a fucking app... fuck that. Hard fuck that.

The issue with the QR codes at restaurants, for me, is that they force you to pull out your phone in a setting where you'd want people to put it away. Even been to dinner with people who are on their phone most of the time? Don't give people an excuse to pull out their phone, many are addicted and won't be able to put it away again and enjoy their meal and their company.

The parking I agree with, that solves a problem and genuinely makes our lives easier, but it should never be the only option for paying for parking.

My phone doesn't have the space that a paper menu does. If I know what I want the QR menu works well, but if I'm trying to decide a menu works much better for comparing the options.

I feel the same way. When my apartment got new locks, we could only unlock the doors with our phone. I refused to download the app, so I had to wait outside until someone could let me in. On a similar note I refused to keep a web browser on my phone because I would use it to constantly check the news or other sites. Every once in a while I had to scan a QR code, but I just quickly downloaded a browser then deleted it. Unfortunately with the new iPhone update you are required to have a browser on your phone. Now I must rely on self-control alone!

This sounds very similar to the approach prescribed in the book Digital Minimalism. I just finished it and can’t wait to join you with a somewhat similar approach!

yes we need to play Apple's iPad from machine press ad in reverse

That ad was a peak example of good intention and bad execution. Absolute no one in the iPad Pro's demographic (artists, musicians, photographers, etc) are ever going to appreciate such destruction. I remember seeing a version of the ad where someone just reversed the whole thing, and it instantly felt much better.

>If parking somewhere requires an app

That battle has been largely lost in my city.

Last year I had to attend a work related course. I'm running a little late, and I get to the place with just a few minutes to spare. Usually I can just tap my debit card and enter my license plate at the terminal, an operation that takes 15 seconds. But this parking garage was app-only. So I spend 15 minutes instead on this bullshit. The first app I tried wasn't supported on the old 1G iPhone SE I had at the time, because I guess parking technology is just too advanced for that neolithic device. Next app works, but of course I have to go through the whole rigmarole of making an account, confirming my email, adding my payment card and then confirming THAT, and so on and so forth. How is this any easier than the old method? My mom would never have figured this shit out. Not that she'd be able to park there anyway probably, because she's inherited my iPhone SE now.

> If parking somewhere requires an app

I mean... it is pretty handy to just add more time from your phone instead of running out to the meter to feed more quarters in.

Before this app-madness, you would usually just check out with your debit card and pay for the time you used (common in Denmark anyway). No need to guess in advance how long you need to park for.

In most of the US you had to pay with coins. No cards allowed, and you'd definitely have to guess how long you'd take. Even in the few places that accepted cards you'd still have to pay for a time slot in advance, and go back to the meter in person to extend that time slot.

It looks like a better title for this article would be "Should We Decouple Phones from Everyday Life?"

And my answer to that is: absolutely.

> ...visit a friend in Washington DC ... an apartment complex could never be occupied by an Orthodox Jew like me (since I cannot use my phone on Shabbat and the holidays), because at every turn the most essential tasks are accomplished with a smartphone.

IANAL, but that sounds like some sort of lawsuit and/or PR disaster just waiting to happen.

While I agree with the general sentiment of over-use of smartphones and useless apps, someone who won't use their phone because someone scribbled something about not doing work on certain days on some parchment six thousand years ago is not someone we should cater to. To each their own delusions.

To each their own. Governments should try to accept every belief system someone has no matter how absurd. Eventually we have to say "no you can't" (ritual murder/human sacrifice used to be somewhat common, as were various other forms of abuse), but in general we should accommodate beliefs.

When I work with Muslims I don't cook with pork for the office pot luck. When I cook with meat I always mark that on the dish so that vegetarians know not to eat it. (To my knowledge I've never worked with someone Jewish - but given some places where I've lived I think I have without knowing, while I have known about some Muslims I've worked with).

7 Day cycles are not an abstract invention but a fact of biology.

Link to research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27830946/

Link to full PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309898157_Seven-day...

Biology doesn't mandate avoiding technology on specific days. Last I checked, circadian rhythms don't prohibit elevator buttons or smartphones.

Additionally, varying interpretations would say you shouldn't use the lights, elevators, etc, so modern living in any manner may be incompatible with orthodoxy.

Many modern appliances come with a "Sabbath Mode" which allows observant users to schedule their operation in advance of the Sabbath. For example, many ovens can be pre-programmed to turn on before the Sabbath and turn off sometime during the Sabbath, as well disable their automatic door-lights, to allow the users to comply with the ancient restriction of not starting a fire on the Sabbath.

Similarly, observant users may use artificial light, they just may not turn it on or off. So there are Sabbath lamps where the bulb remains lit but a shade can be lowered to block out the light.

Are these modern cheats to allow observant users to benefit from the convenience of technology while ignoring the tenets of their faith? I'm no reliogiologist, but if these are cheats, they are ancient ones, not modern ones. For example in past times, people would cook before the sabbath then leave the food on a warm hearth with insulation for later consumption.

One old-time work-around for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy

there are workarounds for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator

I think the interface is key. Typing is a different interface than writing. I’ve heard writing things down improves your recall much better than writing, and I’ve found this to be true. But digital text is just so inherently useful. What I want is notebook that looks and acts exactly like a notebook but I can later edit it on a computer, search it, sync it, etc.

Yes, I know remarkable and other products exist, but they really don’t act exactly like a notebook. You can’t flip through the pages or dog-ear them. You can’t just hand a reMarkable off to someone to borrow or keep, it’s a $700 investment that’s tied to your online accounts. It has a battery life, and you need to have WiFi around to sync.

In a truly perfect world I would just be able to lay my $5 paper notebook infused with nanobots or other such future magic onto a smart surface on my desk and my computer would automatically read the contents.

Obviously we are a long way off, if it’s even possible to make something like that practically, but that’s the kind of interfaces I think we should work towards - computing so efficient and subtle you don’t realize it’s digital.

I kind of hated the movie Her but I thought the scene where the main character is designing something by just sitting down at his desk and talking to the computer conversationally was really cool. We can probably get close-ish in the next 10 years with all this fancy AI.

Being old enough to straddle the manual and the automated world (48 this year), but absolutely loving technology (so I feel I haven't entered my "get off my lawn" era yet), I find myself looking for ways to augment, not replace. Of course, that's as much working in technology for 20+ years (and knowing how it's not magic and how things can fail) as much as it's good sense lol.

> I find myself looking for ways to augment, not replace.

This is how most people operate and prefer their products (Learned from years in the smarthome industry).

You can find simple products where all the controls are inexplicably moved into a phone and they’re generally not well liked. It makes sense for something that augments the phone (e.g. playing music through Sonos) but it doesn’t make sense when you have to use your phone to do things that should have been controls on the device. The latter group is universally despised and products like that never do well.

There’s a growing technology backlash where some people pretend like every smart device is dumb and useless, but they’re almost always fixated on that group of devices that doesn’t do well. They ignore the devices that people actually like because those would invalidate their stance that technology integrations are bad.

The thing is we can't wholly give up our devices and apps, because so many peoples' professional and social lives depend on them. So we have to manage it. It's more like a food addiction than alcohol, since alcohol, you can live without.

I wrote about this here.

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back

We've had technology for 150 years now and much has been positive. Consumers could be encouraged to favor quality , responsiveness & longevity .

Cars & appliances have regressed into unreliable, overstimulated and unpresonsive disasters. Much of this is how they are marketed and sold. Cars seem flashy until you own it for a few months .

It's up to consumers to make a choice.

You can only make a choice if there is a choice.

The author argues for "a restoration of choice: a campaign to ensure analogue alternatives to digital tools."

If you had a viable choice besides a car (like a combination of mass transit, walking, and bike), would you choose it?

But of course most people in the US cannot make that choice because where they live was, over the last century, designed around cars, and often eliminated choices which were present.

Had those choices remained, there would be more pressure on car manufacturers to build better cars.

Consumers alone aren't going to transform cities into a walkable place.

I just bought a car battery charger, a soldering station (not the crazy thing with the RTOS and the apps, standalone and basic), a spare charging cable for my FLIP-PHONE, an Arduino, some MOSFETs and a capacitor/resistor assortments.

It's too late for me to decouple technology from everyday life. Best go on without me. I wish you all luck.

I need to use fire (technology) in my life or I'll die in the cold.

In the opening, the author of the article talks about how he couldn’t live in the apartment building with all the smart-phone requirements because as an Orthodox Jew, he can’t use a smartphone on the sabbath, the reason for this being that the Orthodox ruling is that turning electrical devices on/off is a violation of the Sabbath ban on making fire,¹ which makes your comment a bit amusing.

That said, I think that there’s a lot to be said for choosing low-tech options. I have the overhead light in my living room controlled by a cheap $5 mechanical timer not unlike what was available when I was a kid in the 70s. It’s near an expensive high tech digital picture frame. I like going for the lowest tech option that’s feasible.

⸻

1. There’s some discussion of this subject in Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman which I won’t get into here.

The cynic in me finds it hypocritical for this article to be published on the internet (major technological feat).

The author saying people should be able make their own choice, and specifically "not advocating a Burkean return to the past".

How is publishing this on the internet at all hypocritical?

> people should be able make their own choice

Is anyone currently being forced to use any technology?

I assume you are not suggesting that so long as it's possible to choose to be a hermit in the deep woods, then your technology use is all optional.

In any case, stone tools are technology. Making fire requires technology.

I'll set aside people who need technology to live (clothes are technology, but so is a CPAP machine).

I'll set aside how places are increasingly going cash free (cash is technology, and credit cards are more advanced technology, and phone payment requires even more technology).

Take my gym. Last year they switched to QR phone entry. The QR code changes every few seconds, so you can't print out the code and take it in. The handful of people without a smartphone, like me, got an exception to use an RFID card.

However, those who have a smartphone were not allowed to use an RFID card, even those complaining at the front desk, angry because they did not want to bring their phone with them to the gym.

It's true they are not forced to go to the gym, though note that most other gyms around here have also switched to smartphone entry, and I chose this gym specifically because they are the only one offering a specific style of group training that I want.

Or, take some of the examples at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43137488 where people can't pay for parking because they need a smartphone app which requires not just iPhone/Android, but is only available from the local country's app store - rather difficult for foreign visitors.

It's true they are not forced to park there. They can find somewhere else and walk or take the bus.

Or, take the local college. They are a Microsoft shop. You need 2FA via smartphone app to log into their machines, access email, and the like. Signs and other info about upcoming events require a QR-code for info like time and place. People are not forced to use a smartphone, since they have a choice to not go to college, or find one of the decreasing number of schools which don't expect everyone to have a smartphone.

Or, a friend of mine lives in a city with no good mass transit options or bike options. Those who don't have a car use app-based taxi services. She knows a couple of people who choose to not have a smartphone, so they are limited to places they can walk.

In all cases there is still a choice, but it becomes increasingly Hobson's choice - and we've decided that living as a hermit, even metaphorically, is not what you mean by an alternative to not being forced, right?

I think this comment is a bit hyperbolic - it's really not so bad. Sure, we need to be mindful about accessibility in our rollout of useful technology. But I think the advantages that technologies, including the ones you listed above, bring into our lives far significantly outweigh whatever you are complaining about.

To your points specifically, I mostly see that you are complaining about technology you were previously used to (RFID cards, parking payment systems, public transit, school management systems, etc.) being replaced by more advanced technology (QR codes, 2FA, etc.). So, I don't see the problem as decoupling technology from lives but as enabling a smoother transition to more reliable and advanced technology.

The article makes other points about addiction, etc., and this is a problem that is not innate to technology but to human behavior that is exploited (knowingly or unknowingly) by profit-driven companies. Targeting the technology itself in this situation, again, is being lazy in my opinion.

I feel that this is a basically reactionary perspective, despite the author's assertion that it is not.

Doomscrolling, like drug addiction, is largely the product of the holistic social-biological environment of the actor. People generally do not intentionally throw away stimulating, happy, healthy lives to become destitute drug addicts, and a comparison of opening a parking payment application to being offered alcohol seems hyperbolic.

Smartphones are in many ways materially superior to carrying stacks of paper, just as driving a car is usually materially superior to horse-drawn carriage. It is materially inappropriate to allow the Choice of horse-drawn carriage on the interstate highways. These technologies do require increased infrastructure and investment (that interstate), perhaps, but this is the way the human body itself is laid out: a network of interdependent, largely centralized organs. Compare to a simpler life form like a yeast. Less "infrastructure", but also less going on.

I do agree with some of the sentiment of the author. It is not very libertarian of me, but in my opinion, some increased top-down regulation of social networks might be necessary, i.e., KYC. The ability to hide behind aliases to publish whatever you want without any "skin in the game" seems to have decreased the level of coherence overall and permitted for neurotic anti-reality perspectives to proliferate. If government regulation of behavior and chemicals is appropriate, government regulation of garbage information probably is as well.

> People generally do not intentionally throw away stimulating, happy, healthy lives to become destitute drug addicts

It’s true that people don’t intentionally become destitute drug addicts.

However, it’s completely false to claim that people wouldn’t get addicted to drugs if they had stimulating, happy lives.

A very common entry point to drug addiction in modern life is when people are having a great time in life, doing well enough to afford large amounts of drugs, and feeling invincible because so many things in their life are going their way. People willing experiment with drugs for fun, which can quickly turn into a habit and a cycle.

I don’t know where this myth comes from that drug addicts are a product of their environment, not their own actions. When one of my friends was in rehab (fully recovered now for many years, thankfully) one of their rules was that people had to accept responsibility for their choices and actions in getting involved with drugs. Apparently it was common for people and their families and friends to generate a lot of “not your fault” excuses to absolve them of any responsibility for getting involved with drugs: Blaming peer pressure, a breakup, a bad job, a tragedy. This made people temporarily feel less guilt, but it also allowed them to avoid addressing their own behaviors and actions. Their theory was that entirely externalizing the drug addiction and turning the patient into a 100% pure victim just opens the door to relapse when those circumstances happen again, because it teaches them that it’s not their fault and out of their control anyway.

> Doomscrolling, like drug addiction, is largely the product of the holistic social-biological environment of the actor. People generally do not intentionally throw away stimulating, happy, healthy lives to become destitute drug addicts, and a comparison of opening a parking payment application to being offered alcohol seems hyperbolic.

Even taking this statement at face value, it's easy to point out how absurd it is.

A huge segment of opiod abusers started off with prescriptions. These were functional members of society and availability to dangerous substances absolutely led to bad outcomes. [1]

Or take another vice, gambling. Recently legalized pretty much everywhere, gambling help lines have seen a huge uptick in traffic [2]. It's only been a few years since sports betting has become mainstream, and already it's a drag on society.

But going beyond the face value of that statement, there's a deeper issue which is, huge segments of the population are not leading "stimulating, happy, healthy lives". There's a reason why purveyors of drugs, scams, cults, gambling tend to go after these demographics; people that are desperate for relief. Does that make it okay? Does it excuse the peddling of harmful wares? Because it sounds like you're saying it's fine to sell harm because these people should know better. I think that's a rotten way to live.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I think this line of thinking is wildly antisocial. It's absolutely the "fuck it, i just gotta get my bag" thinking that is ruining trust in our industry.

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/prescription-o... [2]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

That wasn't my intent at all. Because we actually /create/ that social-biological environment, it very much places the ball in the court of people creating these things.

I apologize for misinterpreting, and I admit that my frustration with our industry probably colored how I read your post. To be clear I'm not saying smartphones should go in the trash and we should go back to pagers, I'm just saying that there's a lot of power here, lots of sharks in the water, and we all have monkey brains.

But to your point - who creates this environment, or what incentives are there for creating a less antisocial environment? I don't think collective willpower exists; there are only incentives. The ball may be in our court as creators, but due to the prevailing incentives, we've chosen to use the ball to extract as much as we can from every little piece of everyone's life. And such a powerful tool allows for efficient extraction!

> Doomscrolling, like drug addiction, is largely the product of the holistic social-biological environment of the actor.

Drug addiction is also a product of the availability of drugs.

China has much less problems with opioid overdose than America because they learned their lesson in the 19th century.

Opium use in China was largely ended because of the Communist revolution there in the 20th century, and its policies on the matter.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/347925/

That was what I had heard too, but apparently it's gotten a bit complicated in recent decades [1][2].

Still, I get the impression that drugs are not a part of public life in China the way they are in America.

[1] http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zggs/202406/t20240620_114...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16669899

From my perspective drugs are not a part of public life in America either. I hope this continues (My kids will enter high school soon, and that is one of the places where they will leave my bubble for both good and bad)

LOL at the extract:

The People's Republic of China dealt with addiction as a political problem, offering the new society hope, food, shelter, work, and land instead of opium. Addiction no longer had its appeal. Opium producing poppies were replaced by food corps. Large opium distributors were imprisoned. Addicts were "clean". A mass campaign against addiction mobilized the entire nation. Before Liberation in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party had kept opium out of their areas. However, it took until 1953 to rid China completely of opium. Twenty million Chinese outside the People's Republic of China continue to have serious narcotic addiction problems.

At least make it subtle.

Putting drug traffickers to death is an effective deterrent.

Smart phones are much better than stacks of paper for many purposes I'll agree. However a key is better than a phone for unlocking my door. The switch on the wall next to the door is much better than my phone for turning on the light (note that switch placement matters, if the switch was on the other side of the room it would be worse - but we have figured out where to put switches so this doesn't matter.

Technology should all the advantage of owning a personal slave without all human rights costs.

> The ability to hide behind aliases to publish whatever you want without any "skin in the game" seems to have decreased the level of coherence overall and permitted for neurotic anti-reality perspectives to proliferate.

While I do agree with the need for regulation, I don't agree that anonymity is the issue. Today many/most people post under their real name on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X, and still that doesn't stop people from posting the most vile stuff that you'll ever read. In some sense I feel like that's worse, because if they did so under a synonym there would be some sense that they know that they comments are unacceptable. I honestly think we need more anonymity online.

I suppose you're right about that not being enough. Ultimately there needs to be an increased level of social consciousness for real names to even inspire critique or ridicule. When the reader doesn't think they have any "skin in the game" either, someone's earnest endorsement of ignorance has no felt impact.

I'm just gonna throw into this thread that when I bought a car, I deliberately demanded a model with a physical, metal key. Software is for things that are supposed to be flexible but don't really need to be reliable. For things meant to be reliable but not necessarily flexible or changeable, get hardware.

And if someone's giving you software where hardware belongs, ask what flexibility they're getting out of it.

I'm intrigued. We should think about this more.

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