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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

So the solution to be more "present with the people around you" is to have you look at your wrist every two seconds, rather than just keep your phone in your pocket and look at the messages in 15 minutes ?

That's just bullshit. This will make people even less present, because they'll be even more tightly connected to the invisible communication happening while you're talking to them.

Had my phone running out of batteries today for the first time in months, while i was waiting for someone, and so i ended up just looking at streets and nature around me, doing nothing. That is how you feel more present and aware of your surrounding.

We all know trends are like pendulum. One day, one generation will be fed up with digital overcommunication, and will get back to less invasive technology. I'm looking forward to that day.

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>This will make people even less present, because they'll be even more tightly connected to the invisible communication happening while you're talking to them.

This is an insightful prediction I hadn't considered. People oftentimes have their phones on silent because they don't want to be bothered at certain times, or can at least ignore some intermittent buzzing. The ease of checking your wrist at every buzz will make it more tempting to divert your attention to it. While it may save phone pulls, it will increase distraction from the task at hand. Now not only do I have a choice whether to check the notification, I now know what the notification is and have to decide whether to act on it or not. Surely that added multitasking will make it more difficult to concentrate.

Just like studies they've done on emails, it's better to let them pile up for a period without notification than to quickly glance at each incoming email. People are just better at concentrating on one thing.

I suppose the different types of 'buzzes' might make it easy enough to ignore most notifications without looking, but it remains to be seen if this is how it actually works.

I do think over time we'll learn to deal with these kinds of things. Already we're (slowly) developing etiquette about how we deal with phone notifications, but especially initially it seems people are slaves to the whims of new inventions.

I've seen this pattern with 'regular' phones, for example. In holland I grew up with very clear etiquette of how to communicate by phone. Generally speaking, you pick up and say your name, then the other person says their name, and then you talk. You also don't generally call during dinner time, very early in the morning, or during the night. That this isn't 'natural' behavior became apparent to me when I lived in a country where phones were kind of novel. People would just call each other up at random times and start talking without introducing themselves, causing frequent miscommunication.

Perhaps the apple watch will function in such a way that it 'coaxes' users into better behavior. I certainly hope so. Otherwise, it will just take time for society to develop a proper relationship with our attention-grabbing devices.

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