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Comment by stevenAthompson | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, I've been watching the rise of the "minimal phone", and "analog tech" with interest lately.

People have lost agency to the degree that they're looking to the very tech that stole their agency for answers, and I view that a sign that perhaps the push-back is actually beginning in earnest.

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There's no push-back. Manifestos posted by a few members of the terminally online chattering class don't constitute any sort of real trend. I've yet to see anyone using a "minimal phone" (other than a few older people who might still have a working feature phone).

As an anecdatum, one of my gen Y embedded engineers is using a little stick phone that can barely text, and avoids all social media except Discord (assuming that counts). One of the other younger folk in a different department has something similar. And we've only got around 100 people in this building.

I still have a smartphone, but I barely have any apps on it. I literally have a handful of email apps and two weather apps and that's it.

So yeah, I have a smartphone, but I barely use it compared to how I used to use it even 5 years ago. By unplugging, I've found myself way more productive. I'm reading two or three books a month now. Its an amazing feeling knowing you can drive what you want to do instead of having social media driving your life, manipulating you into using it more and more and not feeling like you're in control.

I've essentially logged off and I really don't miss it. I feel like I can't be the only one.

> I feel like I can't be the only one.

You're not, but you're also not the majority. I'm continually surprised that people are still on Facebook. I get why they use Facebook Messenger, or Facebook Marketplace, but the actual Facebook "news" feed? Have you seen that, it's ads or ads disguised as content... How the hell that thing isn't dead i beyond me.

“I don’t see what you’re seeing and therefore your position is invalid” isn’t really the slam-dunk your tone suggests. I’m also seeing pushback and withdrawal from my own highly-technical circles as we come to terms with how much time and energy these things sap from us with little given in return, and decide to exert more agency as a result. Developers are retiring to work on farms, for crying out loud, suggesting there’s something deeply, intrinsically toxic about the state of things that the people with the most expertise are leaving the field for areas less glamorous or lower in compensation.

You might not be seeing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Nah. The "back to the land" movement is nothing new. Some office workers were trying to become farmers (and mostly failing) back in the 1970s when there were only a tiny number of developers. Again, complaints about the state of society by a few disaffected individuals are meaningless and highly technical circles aren't representative of the broader society. No matter how amazing everything is a few people are going to be unhappy. Nothing has changed.

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/science/back-land-mo...

stego-tech is the equivalent of an anti-tech influencer ("zealot") on HN. Pretty much all they post about on here, and they post a lot on here, is about how tech is ethically bankrupt.

HN is big enough now imo that it's worth starting to tag users so you can know where they're coming from.

Is there a "HN enhanced" extension that would facilitate such tagging?

I found a tampermonkey extension for Firefox based on this comment. So far it seems to work well. I'm not sure if that's what they were referring to though.

Yeah, I’ve been noticing the same. But let’s be honest, most people don’t really get to choose their relationship with tech. The whole analog tech and minimal phone thing sounds nice, but it’s still a luxury. You need a certain level of stability to even consider disengaging. So while I’m hopeful and happy to see those small changes, I’m also skeptical. Real change won’t happen until it stops being a lifestyle choice and becomes a bigger shift (or its part).

I'm calling it right now. Develop world costumers are increasingly seeing smartphones as limiting rather than empowering. It will shift into a product for areas with poor infrastructure as higher income push back against this invasive and manipulative technology. This will create a feedback loop. Lower average income will drive down the utility of the platform for those who fund it (advertisers), smartphones will gradually lose their status signalling value and in another generation it will be prevalent only in areas with poor infrastructure.

I suspect that you're right, but only because of the rise in AI.

At a certain point we'll all have AI personal assistants that are easier to use, more convenient, and less harmful to us than smartphones have historically been. The cool kids will move to the shinier new format, and the poor will continue to use the moderately dangerous, addictive, less efficient legacy tech for a long while.

Maybe these things will come in smart glasses format that we interact with primarily by voice, better smart watches that don't require a phone at all, or maybe it will be something like the star trek communicator?

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