The Cellphone Glued to Your Hand | Hacker News Reader

The Cellphone Glued to Your Hand

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25 pointsnilium20 comments

I was just thinking of this while coming up the elevator after picking up lunch. Instinctively people reach into their pockets to grab their phones for their 5, 6 or 12 story trip.

It's like a natural reaction - I always find this humorous because there is absolutely no service in our elevators. People just end up scrolling up, then scrolling back down.

People love to be distracted, even if it's just for 23 seconds.

In college, of everything that's going on, classes are the least important. Yes, you still need to pass them, but if you're freaking out because someone is distracting you during a boring lecture, you're doing it wrong.

And the boring lecturer is doing it wrong too - wasting your time and money and everyone else's! Be an adult and take matters into your own hands.

The issue here is that there is no lecture -- it's workshop. Everyone in the classroom is participating, so to be the student constantly checking a cellphone alienates you somewhat, and you end up distracting most of the class from the work at hand, which is usually trying to help improve someone else's work. Unfortunately, asking the person to stop rarely works. They'll put down the phone for about five minutes, but the request rarely holds and their hand is back on the phone rather quickly.

Well that's just a personal skill/attribute. I have met with people one on one before and they are incessently checking their cell phone. Very rude when you're trying to get thing done or communicate with them.

I'm confused - all of the workshop and small-group work I've ever done in classrooms (including college) involves an epic amount of shifting, moving, digging for materials, talking, talking loudly, and sometimes shouting. Someone checking a smartphone in that environment would actually be reducing the distractions in the room.

That all sounds far less organized than what we work with in my classes. It's mostly open, but you shouldn't interrupt folks, nobody should need to shout, and you should give room for others to speak. I've only seen people shift around when multiple workshops were going on, usually resulting in small groups working on different pieces, but that's fairly rare and I've seen most instructors abandon it after the first try due to the amount of noise it produces and the tendency to drift off into discussing daily life and such.

It all sort of operates on the idea that you're actually a nice person, capable of behaving reasonably, and discussing things like an adult (or how we believe adults should discuss things even though this is rarely the case). The idea is to ensure the other person wants to return to what they made, and it's enough for one person to treat the work poorly (perhaps in showing they don't care by focusing on their phone) to bother someone, especially newcomers to workshops.

30 humans working independently or in small groups in a 20 foot x 20 foot classroom create almost as much noise as a jet engine, regardless of age or maturity or nationality or other factors. That's something I learned in college.

This changes things a bit. It's no longer "I'm distracted because someone else is on their own phone." It's now: "I'm not getting anything out of this class and we're not accomplishing what we're supposed to be doing because my knucklehead teammates won't pay attention."

This is probably where some communication skills would come in hand. I have no problem with a quick "Hey, nilium, can we please just get this done?" or "Your hot date can wait for you text".

Granted, I've also been very lucky in having self motivated or self chosen teammates for most of my university group work.

Did you even read the post? The author is hardly freaking out, never worries about passing classes, and never once claims that his lectures are boring. He's simply asking his fellow students to respect each other and the classroom, which is perfectly reasonable.

Furthermore, I know that shitting on universities is en vogue, but give me a break. Perhaps you are the one who "did it wrong" and were bored because you chose the wrong university, or the wrong field of study? Or, just maybe, different people learn in different ways?

The author doesn't claim his lectures are boring. He claims that his classmates "whip out a phone mid class to text friends or browse Facebook", which is boredom behavior. So while the author may or may not be bored in class, his classmates obviously are.

And yes, "freaking out" was the wrong way to phrase "so overly concerned/bored that writing a blog post about the issue was necessary".

I think as we get more interesting and engaging tools like the smart phone, we're going to have to do a lot more reflection on how our tools shape our habits.

Like a lot of HN readers, I recognized the potential an always-connected pocket computer had pretty early on.

Perhaps unlike many HN readers, I didn't actually buy a smart phone until this year (though I've had dev loaners for a project or two). And part of what drove this decision was a recognition that over the years, I've been turning into a infosnacking net addict. Did I really want a device that makes always convenient in my pocket, even though it would offer a world of convenience?

This February, after reflecting on what habits I might want a pocket computing device to shape, I finally bought a used iPhone 3GS. I'm cautious about feeding a gaming habit, so I didn't put games on it. I know that I wish I read more long-form stuff, so I loaded it up with eBook apps, and then Readability for digesting longer articles I might note but want to tackle later. I know I wish I experimented with music apps, so I picked out a few simple ones.

And most important? I haven't added service on it yet. This way, I can't use it for infosnacking anywhere.

The hope has been that I'll learn to connect the device with activities I consciously choose as positive uses of my time, and less with responding to the feeds and firehoses of the nets. So far, the experiment is promising. I'm definitely reading more.

Though I did eventually install Words With Friends. :|

The thing that I find amusing is that as a kid I would typically pull out my gameboy whenever possible to pass the time. Now as an adult I seem to have gotten over that and I rarely reach for my phone unless I am expecting a long wait such as at the doctor or the mechanic.

Here's a query: suppose you keep notes on your cellphone. Perhaps you use a piece of software to jot things down so you won't forget them, especially all those things that pop into your mind and will distract you the entire lecture, only to be forgotten later. Can you tell the difference between someone texting and someone jotting something down on their cellphone?

I have been without a phone for about 3 months now. I haven't missed a million-dollar-deal yet or a life saving text message. There are many things you think you NEED until you find it's just luxury with a monetary and social cost. I may get a wifi only phone, but what's for sure is I won't pay $75 for a service anymore.

There are few that would consider their smart phone a "NEED" (save for those that use it primarily for business purposes) however it is highly convenient and affords a significant peace of mind.

In my case, I can hardly imagine traveling in an unfamiliar area without a GPS enabled smart phone, which ensures I not only do not get lost, but should I experience car trouble then help is just a few button presses away.

Off-topic question for the author:

How do you use custom styles on Authpad?

You click the 'Edit forked style' link on the 'Display' page and customize the CSS from there. Does that answer your question?

Came into the comments for a fun discussion, left with a great tidbit about my shiny new toy!

Thanks a ton, given the unobtrusiveness of the font, I'm terrified at how long I would have gone without noticing that.

Absolutely! Thanks a ton.

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