Modern life is so tied with smartphones living without it is increasingly becoming harder
Modern life is so tied with smartphones living without it is increasingly becoming harder
276 comments
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Yeah, I love my phone and the whole world it opens up, having access to so much information in my pocket. But I also hate how tied we are to them now. I bought tickets for a gig recently and the only way I can access them is by downloading an app (that I'm only going to use for this one gig). What if I didn't have a smartphone? What if I didn't want to take a smartphone to a gig? You aren't allowed to go to this gig without one, and it's a small thing, but I don't like how the option is out of your hands.
Pretty much every supermarket in the UK now requires you to download an app so you can access their offers. I hate this so much.
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The most ridiculous part are services insisting you install an app when everything their app does could be in a progressive web app. PWAs are less work to develop as they can run on any device with a browser. For fast food and clothing brands especially, I think PWAs are a no brainer. (Unless you want to track your customers coughTimHortonscough)
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My family got a new KitchenAid stove and I wanted to set a stop time for the oven while we went for a walk. I am able to do this on my shitty oven at our apartment.
I had to connect the stove to wifi, download an app, make an account, and link the stove. All to set a timer. Even then of course there was an error linking them.
Usually I wouldn’t have done that but I was really looking forward to the walk. I was one of the first adopters of Hue lights and used to be excited for smart home stuff. But this is so stupid.
Wondering if it’s some sort of data collection thing and also there’s no way a kitchen appliance company focuses on security and making their wifi connected devices secure.
So dumb.
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It is pretty ridiculous. They started doing the same thing with app ticket at Red Rocks in Colorado. So I have an ancient android phone I use for that shit now, doesn't even have a sim card in it. Has the ticket app and I may put a grocery store app on it at some point, but otherwise it's factory fresh. They can keep their grubby apps off my real phone.
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There’s always a way to get tickets without using an app.
It just takes LOTS OF MONEYYYYY
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I thought I lost my phone before moving states and nearly burst into tears. It has my insurance, the map, what if something happened to me on the road, etc. It was an awful spiraling feeling. Thankfully I found it, but it was a hard reality check of how much I have tied to this little device.
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Yup. Ive spend a lot of time with backups and screenshots of my apps/home screen in case I need to replace it, and I still get weird when I think about it. Years of settings and customization built up, no way I'd be able to get it back 100%.
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I run a contracting business and have had straight panic attacks over not being able to find my phone as I'm rushing out the door for the day. I really need to set up an asterisk server and keep my sim cards there but I just don't have time, nor am I paying a service a ridiculous monthly fee to run it.
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I know Apple is restrictive, like that other guy who commented who likes to apply customizations, but I love that apple products talk to each other seamlessly. I could have gone on through my tablet, except that I don’t pay for it to have its own wireless signal.
That’s actually how I found my phone. My neighbor let me tag on to her WiFi and I used the Find My Phone feature with my iPad. Saved me from a meltdown lol
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As someone who grew up before computers and smartphones were commonplace, for the most part you could still life in the same way as you did before computers and smartphones, because all the things you'd need still exist. You'd just be horribly out of the loop of the way modern life functions.. But you could do it.
What's interesting is that pretty much no one wants to live this way any more. It was pretty damn boring a lot of the time.
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Yeah but maybe a bit of our problem is people don't get bored anymore. The feeling of boredom is an important one and we stuff it down with dopamine doping and doom scrolling. When I was a child, if I got bored I went outside, or I saw if my friend could play, or I got a toy out. Once smart phones came along suddenly being bored was just an invitation for Reddit— Lemmy— to fill in the void.
I'm glad that Lemmy is not as addictive as Reddit was. I want to be bored a bit sometimes. Boredom makes me do chores instead of ignore them. Or play with my kid more. Or go hiking.
I don't imagine 80s kids would have said they had boring childhoods, just because they weren't completely soaked up with phones demanding their attention 24/7.
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My childhood wasn't boring, but I was bored an awful lot. And I agree, boredom can be a great motivator. But I can't say that I miss being bored.
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This. It destroys real life community and severs local bonds between people. It makes one ungrounded.
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I think nobody would really say their childhood was boring. But if you were to take a kid from the 80s and a kid today and compare their daily lives, regardless of what interests they have, the 80s kid would find their own life pale in comparison. You've got video games, movies, social media, news, books, and music on the entertainment front. There's so many paths to express one's creativity, whether in art, music, engineering, film. And of course nothing is really stopping you from doing anything you could do 30 years ago and doing it today.
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To take a step back and think of our parents letting us out of the house to roam where we did without having any way of getting into contact with us is absolutely bonkers to me as a parent now.
I'm having to work on a safety plan for a trade school. There is no good way of establishing communication across campus in the event of a disaster outside of A) Walkie Talkies or B) Cellphones. And honestly I can't entrust faculty and staff to grab a walkie talkie in such an event. What I can trust is that they'll have their cellphone on them.
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To take a step back and think of our parents letting us out of the house to roam where we did without having any way of getting into contact with us is absolutely bonkers to me as a parent now.
You've bought into paranoia. In the US, most areas are far safer than they were in previous generations. Crime rates are largely down from their highs in the 70's and 80's. And even the 90's wasn't a safe time, by comparison. Even in the 90's, the whole "stranger danger" crap was so overblown that it probably did far more harm than good. The problem today is that news, both traditional and online are a 24x7 feed of "doom, DOOM, DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" which give a horribly skewed perspective on how bad things really are. For my own kids, they disappear with the neighbors' kids for hours at a time, and we'll call them in when it gets dark. This usually involves either yelling from the front porch (I really wish I could whistle like my mother did. I could hear that whistle a mile off); or, calling around to the various houses until we find them. They don't have cell phones yet, and probably won't for a few more years, as they just don't need them. Also, I don't want to worry about an expensive electronic device ending up left somewhere or smashed.
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A bit of things are harder to do now, without smartphone or especially without computers. I have no idea how this is going in the US, but here (France) there's been a big push for "all online" stuff, including mandatory administrative tasks. Less digital alternative are still mostly available, but the trend of being able to handle thing without computers is clearly dying. And yes, this means an increasing number of people is lost and can't do stuff we expect them to do; it seems not enough people care.
And, even outside of that, having a bank account these days can require having a smartphone, more specifically an iOS or Android; the "bank app" being used as an authenticator and required for anything from logging-in on their website to performing money transfers.
We still can operate offline, mostly, but there's a huge push toward changing that. And I'm not sure there's a way to make that without leaving a lot of people behind.
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Yes we are probably at the tail end of the time where you can still pay with cash, go to the bank branch, handle things at government offices, etc.
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I'm trying to not spend too much of my time online and I'm going kinda successful on that. But I can't say the same about living without smartphone. I need it to study through PDFs and reading EPUB books. I'm 31 years old, so I picked a tiny part of the "pre terminally online era" during my childhood. However, I've became a sort of internet addict in my teens. I should be avoided it, but it's a bit to late. Can't fix the past, but I can fix my future.
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I strongly believe we will evolve around the technology we created.
What made sapiens evolution unique was our ability to communicate. We are exponentially increasing that ability.
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Relevant meme...
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It's a media art piece by Mark Vomit.
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Thanks!
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The smartphone is the only science fiction thing we have.
We didn't get table top fusion reactors, food pills, Rosie the robot, casual commercial space travel, flying cars, hoverboards, etc...
But we did get a little computer we can carry around that has literally everything in it. It's a camera, it's camcorder, it's a microcassette voice recorder, computer, telephone, book, TV, video conference system, remote control for all my lights, remote control for the TV, a McDonald's ordering device, instant messenger, magazine, radio, GPS for my car, GPS tracker for my family, health monitoring device, flashlight, Sears catalog - It would probably be harder to come up with a list of things that it can't do.
You can take my smartphone from my cold dead hands.
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This kind of "single device that replaced an entire backpack of stuff" is why there are no computers in the Dune universe.
They would make the plots too easy to resolve.
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The whole no computers thing in Dune never made any sense. The only difference between a computer and an industrial controller is scale, not kind. We had wood computers in the 19th century. Some of them are still operating.
Ok lets talk about sewage. To turn human feces into dirt we use stages, to move from stage to stage we use screw conveyors. Without computers how are you going to regulate the speed of it? When to run them? Deal with clogs? Report motor problems?
Nothing would work beyond about the 1840s. And yet they act like it does. Which brings me to my fantheory about Dune: Just assume everything is told by inbred religious royality morons cosplaying and it all makes sense. Why do they fight with swords? Why cant they fold space without spice and yet clearly could in the past? Why do they think the Bene witches have powers? Because they are religious royality morons cosplaying.
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From: Leia@royal.ald
Subject: Deathstar plans
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We did get flying cars. They are called helicopters. Impractical except for niche applications.
Look at the mofos you see only dealing with driving in straight lines on the ground and tell me you want them flying. Like a week ago I made the foolish mistake of honking (one honk) someone who cut me off and they got behind me just so they could rage honk and tailgate me for a solid minute. You want that guy with access to the ability to drop stuff from above?
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I don't trust most LA drivers to handle two degrees of freedom (technically one and a half) why the fuck would I trust them with six then?
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touch grass lad
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I agree, in fact let's get rid of all technological advances humans have made in the past few hundreds of thousands of years. Man wasn't intended to use "tools" like weapons or agriculture or housing or machine manufacturing. Our ORIGINS say we're monkeys, we shouldn't be walking on 2 legs or speaking like this! After all, social sedentary culture and technological advancement is COMPLETELY UNNATURAL and NOT AT ALL a core part of an ""intelligent"" species' evolution! Ooo ooo aaa aaa
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Makes me think of restaurants with QR code menus (been to a couple bars where you have to order through that menu too).
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I hate this.
Loads of places just have very poor implementation.
A few weeks ago I was waiting at a counter to order like an idiot for 15 minutes while everyone ignored me until I realised other customers were just ordering with their phones. Just a simple sign saying "please order with your phone" would have done the trick.
Another place I couldn't figure out what time the kitchen actually opened. Like you could order but the kitchen wasn't open yet. They just assume you would know something so obvious but it's not obvious if you don't know.
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Teach them the hard way: replace some of their QR codes to open porn sites
In Brazil, some places also accept payment and offer a QR code on the table to speed up some data input. Some miscreants replaced said QR so the payment would go to their accounts instead.
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Had that at a restaurant recently. It took me to a scanned image of their menu that I had to zoom around on to see everything. And it was multiple pages of that crap. What the hell is the point of that? At least format it for phones if you're going to make people do that. And this was not some mom and pop business.
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This was what made me push my mom to go out and get a smartphone to replace her old flip phone. (That, and the fact that she had no idea how to send or receive text messages, or check voice mail.)
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I hate that crap. At least post it on the wall or something. Don't even get me started on people demanding a tip at places where you have to do everything yourself.
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I hate this so much. There were 2 times where I forgot to bring my phone with me:
One of them, they literally had to go next door to FedEx to print me a menu because they didn't have a physical menu.
The other place, they just couldn't serve me because everything is done online. You scan your table QR, do all of your ordering on there, and pay on there too at the end of your meal.
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Does anyone disagree with this? My city gives out smartphones to people who can't afford them because it's cheapest way they can get access to city services. Much more efficient then having staff in an office to enter data and make calls on their behalf.
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I mean, the city handing out phones like this kind of highlights just how important it is considered to have a cellphone these days.
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Do they also have access to public internet and public charging stations? What happens if the phone is lost or damaged??
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I'm not 100% but they will replace the phone if damaged. I'm not sure about if it is lost. There is probably a cut off where giving out phones is considered worse than having social workers enter data for certain people. There is housing assistance which would include electricity. I suppose you could charge at city service points? The cell phone plan includes Internet access.
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Which country is this in?
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In the US there is a federal program that does the same.
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I'll tell ya, it's getting a lot harder to drive around my horse and buggy with all these darned automobiles on the road. These iron chariots are making the simple pleasures a real humdinger.
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Horses and iron chariots are evil capitalist ploy. Embrace walking bare foot.
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fire-breathing dragons, they are!
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I have been slowly setting myself up with as many alternatives as possible. We have a Garmin in the car so we don't use Gmaps, I've ditched all corps like Google or Facebook even run my own search engine. Honestly as daunting as it is once your not tied to a phone life is so much better. Don't fall into the trap
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Kudos to you. I've tried to degoogle myself (I'd say I was moderately successful until my last company came along), although it's been a pretty irritating ride. Now I'm still very sensitive when it comes to security and privacy but not to the extent I was before.
I misplaced my phone a few days ago and didn't think of looking for it until just yesterday. The only reason I did was for OTP for my banking apps (browser and Paypal still asked me for them). If not for those, I think I can pretty much go without a smartphone, tbh. My PC and laptop, though? Can't.
Running your own search engine sounds very interesting. How steep would the learning curve be? And is it feasible for only personal use?
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Searxng is my go to. Consider using a public instance or hosting off-site to increase anonymity.
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Ye it's the freaking bank and company login authenticator else I would have rooted and do whatever I want with MY phone
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in case you didn't know: it's relatively easy to write, in just a few lines, a little program to produce the OTP codes on a computer instead of a phone app.
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Interesting - I've been thinking about trying to decentralize lately, and been having fun collecting my data from sites to analyze my own behaviours in data and build unique recommendation engines for myself and was recently thinking about trying to build a crawler and DIY search engine for myself. Any tips/pitfalls on getting started with that?
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And even if you have a smartphone, you are strongly encouraged to get WhatsApp and donate all of your data to Meta that way. Not too long ago someone told me about having sent me messages through a channel don’t even use. I wonder if WhatsApp still shows me as online even though I haven’t used the app in more than 10 years.
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I hate that very much. I don't use any of Meta's apps, except for WhatsApp. Why ? Because everyone here in Italy uses it and without it I can't contact basically anyone. Want to contact a medic ? WhatsApp. Want to send a document to a clinic ? WhatsApp. Want to make a group chat with some study collegues ? WhatsApp, because not everyone wants to download Telegram or anything else. No one uses SMS or iMessages. Only WhatsApp...
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Tbf where I live it's messenger and that's way worse than WhatsApp.
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Same in Portugal, it's maddening
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You should talk to your close contacts about switching to Signal
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Up until long-covid and being over-worked kicked me out of a job and onto my ass for a few months, I was a caseworker for adults with severe mental illness for years.
Helping people get a government phone was a necessity if we were working on transitioning them out of their residential care facility into more independent living.
It was such a frustrating struggle for the Clients without phones.. Reminders, telephonic appointments, me being able to reach them was so much more difficult if they didn't have a phone. Even being in RCFs, the resident line was always busy or misplaced, and staff at those facilities are not always the most stellar employees...
When covid hit and everything went on lockdown, it was nearly impossible for my team and myself to reach our Clients without cellphones...
Cellphones have become so ingrained in society and are essential for access to not only normal community resources, but also essential for adequate coordination and access to one's treatment team and resources.
It's getting harder and harder to function in society without a cellphone. That trend will only continue. I don't think it's necessarily/inherently a bad thing; it's the evolution of our society. But it certainly is a terrible thing if you do not have one...
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For all the trouble it causes, the benefits I've seen for people experiencing disability that smart phones and Internet has is amazing. I think we do need to be treating Internet access as something people just need to live in a modern society, like water or electricity. We are probably at the point where a basic smartphone or laptop shouldn't be considered a luxury.
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As a society we place huge importance on reading and writing literacy yet forget that digital literacy is just as important. Having a cell phone is, like it or not, a pretty big part of being literate in this digital world. We don't see people acting proud of themselves for not being able to read (at least I hope not), and cell phones should be no different.
"I don't even have a smart phone" is the new "I don't even own a TV."
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Right? It's a basic expectation that you have a phone number for everything. Work, doctor, etc. But we still treat it like having a phone is a luxury, for entertainment and convenience. Buy it yourself and figure it out yourself!
Hell, even restaurants are more and more replacing menus with QR codes
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I've heard the single most important purchase incredibly low income people can make is a phone, because without it they can't apply to new jobs or network with people because all applications are done online these days
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I've seen homeless people with smart phones. There's definitely affordable ones out there
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You can buy a Xiaomi phone that will last you for 4 years for less than $99, and there's some "functional" phones for much less than that but they will be unusably slow for casual use and more like emergency devices. Then there's the 2nd hand market...
Fortunately smart phone access is not that difficult
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The one thing that really makes me sad about common cellphone usage is the lack of face-to-face connection. It's a trip because I went through middle and high-school without smart phones, everyone did. I miss those regular, everyday connections with people.
Those that haven't gown up a significant amount of time without smartphones don't think the difference is that severe, or that the connections we've replaced them with are the same or superior, but it just... isn't.
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Is it really the phones or is it just that connecting to people after high school gets harder?
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True, school is nice in that it forces you to hang out with your peers, and that isn’t really emulated later in life. But I don’t think that’s the point.
The point is that it’s just tougher to have non distracted conversations. Or even non distracted periods of time hanging out.
It just feels awkward when someone is sitting there texting with someone else in front of you. Or just looking something up on their phone “really quick”, and then is MIA from the conversation for five minutes.
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Both. It makes it easier to keep in touch technically, but whether or not they are responsive is a whole other story.
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Well, connecting gets harder in the sense that we're no longer all forced together into the same space, but phones have added a severe second layer to that. It disconnects us from those physically around us in order to digitally connect us with people not physically present.
Prior to phones, eye contact was pretty frequent. More small talk between strangers happened. People were far more aware of those around them. That's just not the case now.
Again, smartphones have brought a lot of good to our lives, but the physical connection to people around us has been paralyzed. It really is sad, and I'm sad that it's not something I'll ever experience again: a space that physically connected. I'm sad that younger generations will never experience it their whole lives.
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The thing is, we don't know how viable this is in the long term.
For all we know, every 200 years the Earth is hit by a major EMP sunspot event that will fry our cellpones, cell towers, and satellites.
This isn't just speculative. In 1859 a major solar storm took down most of the electronic communication of that time. Back then, that meant telegraph communication. The first major telegraph message had been sent only 15 years before, so world-wide communications didn't suffer too much.
If we had a major storm now, the winners would be those countries and institutions that still retained paper-based communications and information management systems. The losers would be everyone dependent on electronics communications.
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That is not true. Paper-based information storage is significantly more unreliable and volatile than electronic storage. Geomagnetic storms of such intensity as the Carrington Event would certainly cause power outages and other inconvenience, sure, but modern integrated circuits based on field-effect transistors would likely be entirely unaffected, and most integrated circuitry is hardened anyway and especially high-density VLSI devices like flagship smartphones that use 5nm manufacturing processes are protected against so many special cases and quantum phenomena like electromigration that a geomagnetic storm would appear to be a very minor problem. Solid-state storage drives are also very reliable in extreme scenarios and most would likely retain their data in the case of a major solar flare. And much data is still saved on optical storage media like DVD, and these are absolutely immune to geomagnetic storms and EMPs. The only thing we really should worry about is our power grid, but we won't lose any significant quantity of data and definitely not such that is integral to the functioning of our technology and society. And Faraday's cage still exists, so a lot of militaries and institutions will probably have made arrangements that make sure their devices are not compromised.
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You are correct that there are many devices and plenty of examples of infrastructure that is hardened against such things- but it's just plain wrong to assume it wont be a major problem- Multiple studies have found the damage caused by a solar storm equivalent to the 1859 example would cause trillions of dollars of damage and a lot infrastructure would be down across most of the 1st world for at least months if not years.
It would probably also trigger a lot of violent outbursts from populations around the world, probably a lot of mostly peaceful and fiery looting, riots etc.
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I didn't understand a lot of those terms so you're probably smart enough for me to trust you, thanks for helping assuage my fears
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Yeah… man, that would be a clusterfuck. Or I should say, WILL be, when it inevitably happens.
Probably the least of my worries for when that happens but uhh… anyone know if optical media are capable of surviving a Carrington event? Sure as shit hard drives won’t. I’d like to keep some data..
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Maybe I'm misremembering it but I don't think personal devices would be much affected. Apart from potentially damaging satellites, AFAIK the biggest danger is induction of big currents in powerlines and telecommunications lines and it could fry the components connected directly to them if they're not sufficiently protected from power surges (substations, network elements etc.). Any damage to data storage devices, computer chips and such would only be secondary, if the surge propagates all the way to the computer or server, which I find quite unlikely on a larger scale with all the surge protections we have. But someone correct me if I'm wrong.
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You used to be able to get a military discount at Home Depot by showing your ID. Now they won't give it to you unless you have a smart phone, sign up for a Home Depot account, agree to their ToS, log in at the store, wait for them to email you a verification email (which they do literally every single time), and then navigate back to your account, find the QR code, and scan it. It's fucking bullshit!
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i would rather download an app then show my god damn ID lol, even then it isnt worth it because you will spend more unknowningly
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Why in the world would you rather go through everything I just shared (privacy concerns aside), than just whipping out your ID which takes 2 seconds?
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Yeah. Restaurant I was in about a month ago. You need a phone to order, to pay, and to see the menu.
You can almost imagine the conversation
Boss: so we will move everything to app based
Underling: but what about people without cellphones?
Boss: people without cellphones have no money.
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Fuck society. Grr, I don't like how much we're expected to have phones. It's not just the electronic though, but the number attached to it as well.
I'm phoneless as a stand against canadian telecom companies and wow I'm basically a second-class citizen. Almost any service becomes inaccessible.
Heavens forbid I care about my own privacy and get a vpn. Now I'm locked out of even MORE services that want to ID check me with my phone.
Just let me have what I seek 😭 there's too many steps to these services now
auuuugh rant done ty.
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It's very interesting to see how primitive services such as government's services requires citizens to have a phone. So eventually you can literally not be a citizen without a phone.
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The life I experience is an invisible struggle, but it's partially self-induced. I wonder how others are fairing, especially those who didn't have the privilege of choice.
Then again, my city's vocal majority want to wipe the board clean of homeless so maybe my empathy is misplaced.
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I can understand your need for privacy, even though I don't go to similar lengths myself. That being said, I always prefer the way forward instead of shutting new technology out. I don't have the answer to how that would translate to your situation specifically, but a privacy minded android or linux os with a prepaid sim card could go a long way.
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It shouldn't be a need.
I do agree. I'm behind in terms of privacy protection, but most of my energy is on escaping some life struggles at the moment. I'm fairly aware of where to find what I seek, but it'll take a lot to collect all that information and implement it. Story of our lives though, eh? ;P
I've looked into prepaids, but it goes against my desire to support our telecoms. I looked into VOIPs as well, but most services block them because again, they need to identify YOU and I refuse to accept it, QoL be damned.
I'm currently thinking about shadowing off someone else's identity. Solves a lot of my problems, but I'd like to figure alternatives and potential reprecussions before I go bumming off my friends.
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If I can't get a custom rom and use xprivacy and adblocking on my personal phone, I will instead carry a fucking ham radio for emergencies. I'm sick and tired of tech corporations but also society in general walking all over people, profiting from it and generally running things further into the ground at every chance they get.
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Ahahaha ham radio future~ just you wait until everyone switches and it becomes profitable to have AI listening in. The oh-so-likely future. ;p
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I need a smartphone app to:
Access mail from my government
Log into any website as 'me' (taxes, car related stuff, my net bank, etc)
Buy a damn bus ticket
In reality i dont need my phone to be smart. But society wants me to
But i do everything i can to avoid getting apps from various companies. Membership bonuses etc. I hate it so much.
I do enjoy my smartphone in the car though, for google maps, music and taking a call. But.. i would much rather, if that was just built into the cars infotainmentsystem.
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The membership apps are the worst. Every time i shop for clothes they ask me if i already have their app. I tell them no. they tell me if i want to get it. I tell them thanks but it's OK i don't want it. Then they tell me if i sign up i get 2% discount. I tell them thanks but it's really OK. And then they look at me as if i'm the only person ever that didn't want to install their spyware in exchange for a tiny discount. Do people really just get those apps?
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People definitely get them for fast food. Not me. I sure as hell don't want Burger King siphoning my data.
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I'm a "If I don't do it when I think about it, it's not getting done" kind of person, so I like being able to do EVERYTHING on my phone, because it's always in reach when I need to accomplish something.
That being said, I HATE downloading apps and creating accounts to do simple one-off tasks.
Last week we went out to dinner for our anniversary, and there was a QR code to pay the bill. I think, "Cool, I don't have to wait for the server to take it." So, I scam the code. It leads me to an app download. Ugh. Fine. I'll wait for this to download. Once I open it, it prompts me to create an account.
I immediately uninstall, and wait for the server to take, run and return my credit card.
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Modern life is difficult without internet access, but yet you can live without internet, the question is, how long?
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Depends on what standard of living you desire and where you are- If you want to live as a hobo then as long as you survive your basic biological needs you could go indefinitely without internet, the same is true of any outsdoorsman who lives in a remote area where they can survive just based on their ability to hunt and collect water.
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My relative lived in the bush with their cats for like 40 years without internet. I'm not sure they had ever used it before or even knew how to, so I think that made it easier. Just had a land line and antenna TV.
Moved back and had a hard time figuring out why the doctors wanted to contact by email. Figured out how to use GPS via Android Auto pretty quickly. Internet shopping wasn't mastered.
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But every companies and governments are dependant of Internet now
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Only on first world, not the third
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I remember I lost internet for months, only thing keeping me sane was a youtube downloading wbsite thats dead now, a trackphone and shit tier free wifi. If your on android, there are tools to make a (CLI) program called yt-dlp easy to use on mobile, as it converts telling the computer what to do via text into buttons and toggleswitches
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It's a good thing and a bad thing imo.
People now can keep and relive moments easier and faster than ever before, but it does suck how big companies now just use it to do anything and how ads are just thrown everywhere to make every possible penny they can.
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My phone borked on me recently but I got it up with a complete system upgrade and install from scratch. Meanwhile I realized how dependent I am on it for everything from communication to identification to transportation to deliveries to intercom and beyond. I don't like it with this single point of failure.
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I have two personas. One with a google phone with FB (to talk to my mom to Greece), and a macbook. And another with a de-googled Murena eOS phone and Linux laptop. One of these two personas will die once I move to Greece next year. I don't mind not being able to talk to friends on FB or IG. If they want to find me, there's email, or they can join federated social media. I won't miss them.
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Thanks, I had never heard of Murena before. I've been worrying about what would happen when my Oneplus 7 Pro dies. I'll get one of their eOS phones.
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You could actually put Lineage OS with Micro G on your current phone and be living the dream, it is supported.
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I'm at least happy to see some decent, really cheap (<$100 CAD) smart phones popping up that are competent enough to work with, but it's still such a single point of failure for so many aspects of life right now. Not even not having a phone, but a dead battery (and inability to swap it out with a backup like you used to), spontaneously breaking, losing cell service at an inopportune time to access your virtual tickets and things.
I don't mind smart phones, but the single point of failure for so much is really not good.
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I think people should strive to have 2 phones in general one for backup.
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Many people have older phones for that reason
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I moved out the western slope of Colorado, to the high desert, after I got an MS diagnosis. I've never had more concentration in my life. I was able to focus without a chime or someone else needing to contact me. Just me and how to move forward. Years later I moved back to the city.
It took my a while to get back to city life when I left, the busy everything, the phone going off, the lights in the sky at night blocking the stars. How do we all do it?
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If you don't mind me asking, did you move to the desert to improve your symptoms? My wife was diagnosed a few years ago and temperature regulation has been an issue, and the humidity really makes things worse for her.
Did being in a desert climate help with any specific symptoms?
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That's one of the reasons I went and it did help. I had to leave for a different reason. The dry air was amazing, it was like taking a wet blanket off. My mobility went up and my energy up.
It's worth a visit for sure!
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I live a bit remote in the mountains on a farm. I come to a city and feel like a complete potatohead. I'd survive one week before going completely mental.
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A friend of mine has no smartphone (still an old Nokia mobile) and thus has no access to a train ticket in his state in Germany. There is no way of a non-digital ticket. That's so f'ed up
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Same goes with reading skills, which at some point weren't needed in society I bet.
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Interesting perspective but then I think of the data on this phone as an extension of my privacy/private life; literacy doesn't track.
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I guess privacy is getting more and more popular nowadays. Hopefully private smartphones will become easier to get
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Yeah, phones such, literacy doesn't. But phones could have better software and hardware, then it would be fine.
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Except that skills aren't at risk of being stolen, lost or stop working. Phones are tools, not skills.
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Yes! So many things that where previously websites require apps nowadays. Makes it hard to function in society for me as I (with very few exeptions) refuse to install closed source software on my computer or phone.
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My wifi router needs a app to change any settings on it, its so stupid too, if you try the normal method of changing settings via a web browser it just gives you a flat out "no download our app" and the app is functionally worse with less features than what the old wifi router settings page used to give, its so unnecessary and annoying how everything that used to work fine with a website is needlessly packaged into a (often inferior) app.
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That's hillariously bad... my condolences.
I would recommend getting a router that you can flash wrt or advanced tomato on. If you want to go hardcore, you can get a server with pfsense.
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It how swift it has been. Friend and I went to a "mall" we hadn't been to since we were kids. He pointed out "holy crap, this is where it used to be rows and rows of payphones. Even in 2010 I didn't have a mobile, and only got one as all the payphones vanished.
Now so many things require an app or online sign-up.
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I get legitimately excited when I see payphones now.. It's like coming across a spectacular animal from a distance in the wild.
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One of my favorite sights when I visited Yosemite National Park was the payphone and huge, empty newspaper vending rack that were still present outside one of the lodges. Like walking back in time. People probably thought I was weird as I giggled to myself while taking photos. It's ok, I am!
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Now so many things require an app or online sign-up.
US? Not here. And online signups (if no online service) provide an alternative way.
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Sadly here a huge amount of government is entirely online. Even 4 years ago when I wanted to do my passsport, because of my age bracket, I was not allowed to use a paper or internet method. I HAD to use a web app, and then with the app someone had to take a photo of me for the picture. No "send a photo in" no email the photo.
It couldn't be your normal passport photo eaither, full waist up photo, with full white background and neutral lighting.... It was completely impossible.
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I mean we quit reddit, right?
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I personally abhor the idea of smartphones becoming increasingly more personal and necessary, especially since I live where those little black bricks are the most sought after item for thieves (thousands stolen per month). Add the chance of falls or something else making the phone unusable, the screen unresponsive, and bam, you're fucked up big time.
And let's not forget what great tools they are for spying on you without your consent.
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I love those qr codes at restaurants. No need to interact with waiters. Just browse and order at my leisure.
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I'm SzPD and not from the states. Had to go through Houston last year on a connection flight, when I first saw those tablets in the airport I thought it would've been the bees knees. Thing is, those things are so overloaded with useless shit (like ads) I just wanted to talk to a waiter. So many clicks to get to the main courses on offer, and there wasn't any available space for notes, in case a costumer had a specific need (allergies for example). Plus, signal was so damn slow it took a while for it to load the dishes' pictures.
No contact ordering has potential but it needs UX designers on top of the whole thing in order to make it more convenient and faster than just telling the waiter what you want.
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I can see how it can get annoying if that's the case for you, or in America in general. Maybe that's how shitty the experience is in the US that people really love to complain about it. Seriously, every single time a thread about how deeply smartphones are embedded into society comes up, someone will gripe about qr code incessantly. Be it on reddit, fb, and now here.
I'm from Malaysia and eateries here are very good at it. None of those ads, no pesky additional install, really good ticketing system, and easy payment process at the counter with ewallet (also qr code) once you're done. All I bring is my phone and car keys. Data and coverage here is very good and cheap on all carriers, so photos and menus loading time is never an issue.
I don't need to call on that single waiter in the restaurant to make an order or to see the menu. I just sit my ass down and scan. The order goes straight to the kitchen and they only need to send my food to the table.
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I wish there was some universal app or website template for restaurants with functionality just like Wetherspoons! selecting a table number then ordering everything directly from there. no social interaction with the staff required... it is heavenly.
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All the qr I've used are just web url. I just scan them with my brave browser app. No need for a separate app install. In fact I think that's what people mostly gripe about, needing to install another app just to make an order.
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Personally, I hate it. they're only ever in places with terrible cell reception and no Wi-Fi.
Or the Wi-Fi is so damn throttled because they're being overwhelmed by everyone trying to look at their menu at the same time.
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I can't love a modern life without following of what's going on in the world. Internet is the only thing that allows us to do this efficiently.
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Even government services depend on you having a cell phone or access to internet in order to access services like EI.
Yet, internet (or at least decent internet) isn't available in most places in rural Alberta.
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This is why Internet should be viewed as a utility and regulated as such.
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It really should be. But the 70 year olds that make the laws barely remember how dial-up works, so it's not at the forefront of their minds
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Yeah in Australia we have an app used to identify yourself to government websites, called mygovid. It only works on phones. You need it. You can't even install your grandma's id on your own phone because then you'd lose yours.
"It'll be fine, 99% of people have phones" is a dumb idea when everyone needs it.
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Yeah. If calling/sms was all I used my phone for, I would probably still use my old Lumia Windows phone even as the app builders stopped supporting it.
But because its for public transport tickets, accessing the local library, accessing the gym center, ordering at restaurants or food delivery, sending money to family, car navigation, syncing my exercise watch, being invited to social events, streaming my cloud saved music library, rent a city-bike, check my medicine prescriptions..
I need a phone that is up to date. How is people living without a smart phone today?
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It would be fine if you had a computer, like a lot of us did before smartphones were popular.
On your list of activities, most of those are not things I use a smartphone for. I do use it to play music sometimes, and I use an open source maps app for long drives where I'm traveling to somewhere new. Otherwise I do all of that with a normal phone call or a website on the computer.
I don't install anybody's app. Fuck everybody's store apps, I won't do it. An app is not necessary for most of life's activities, and I prove it on a daily basis by not using them.
Last time I went to a nice restaurant, they wanted me to check in at the front on a tablet. I went through the motions until it wanted my cell phone number to alert me when a table was ready. I canceled the process and refused to give them my cell phone number. The host / receptionist was not happy but was able to accommodate our simple request of getting a table anyway.
All you have to do is just not participate in the data collection by saying "no" to that stuff. It's easy when you get used to that as a default stance. I'm still able to do everything I want to without all that invasive bullshit.
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All you have to do is just not participate in the data collection by saying “no” to that stuff.
But honestly, I love to use my phone for everything. Love not having to talk to people to get stuff done. Not deal with queues. Not wait for the server to be ready for me to pay before I leave. Not carry around paper tickets, or printed maps. Not having to find a seven-eleven to buy bus tickets.
I am worried for those who for some reason can't use a smart phone. A lot of this doesnt have a website alternative. Most of it has paper/plastic/in-person-alternatives still, true, rarely advertised though. I am worried the analog ways disappearing eventually since very few uses it.
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Yeah this little thing is basically what defines every person today. It holds our bank account, government info and other more critical information.
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Mine has none of that, and I get by just fine. Never have I ever installed a banking app on my phone, nor any restaurant or store app, or government app.
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computers can do most of the checking/ordering/sending via websites, and if you live outside of a city those phone-connected infrastructure things don't exist.
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This is Norway. You'll have to be inside a mountain to not get a signal here. Phone-connected infrastructure is everywhere. I've climbed the highest mountain in Telemark and paid with my phone at the kiosk at the top.
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Are these shower thoughts or are they just thoughts?
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I went from a wallet with a bunch of cards and a bit of cash to my phone. nothing else. haven't used cash or my physical card in years
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Funny I just was thinking if I could go a weekend without my phone. And if I did it how many people would I have to tell before I did it so I didn't get a bunch of crap for not answering texts for 2 days!
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I leave my phone at home sometimes. There's always something that comes up, but in the end I've realized it doesn't actually matter that much.
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I specifically make a point of going on a week long trip every year and leaving my phone at home. I carry an inReach for emergencies, but only give the "number" for it out to a few trusted people with very strict instructions not to contact me outside of critical, actual emergencies like someone dying.
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Buddy, i fell the same! I wanted to make my smartphone a weekend thing, but I just cannot function wihtout it. I literally can not log in my work pc wihtout it, it's insane!
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It's really insane
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I could live without the memes, cut pet videos, games, camera, social media, gifs and probably other junk. I couldn't do without the phone and the flashlight
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One of my favourite books is Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers.
"The essential idea is simple: to lead happy, productive lives in a connected world, we need to master the art of disconnecting."
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Is that one of those things that only sounds profound because it presents a contradiction?
In order to X we must first not-X.
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It is basically impossible in this day and age. Similar with credit cards. I have been using a LightPhone for 2 years and before that a Cosmos 3 flip phone for 5 years. Currently 7 years off smartphones and I’ll never go back, but I don’t see how a young person can do it right now. Just doesn’t seem possible and i hate that.
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True, but look at it the opposite way - modern life is just getting easier and easier because of mobile phones. Think of all the things that they make easier and replace. When we finally get digital licenses later this year I can officially leave my wallet behind. The only time I'll need it is when I go to the gym as unfortunately they don't have their NFC cards available via phone.
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This is so true. I lost my iphone three hours ago and I just keep getting harder.
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Welcome to 2010.
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Yep, the one time I decided to go out without my smartphone it got me stranded in the middle of nowhere without way to contacting anyone until 4 AM.
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Yeah... I commented to my friend "and a smartphone is a basic human right, right?" When talking about this. Well, internet is not, either so yeah, your existence is extra gimped or based on touching ground base if you're homeless, phoneless and internet planless.
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It's about who gets to participate in society.
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I regularly live with a dumbphone. All it can really do is makes calls and text. Its only difficult if you give a shit about social media and chat apps. I don't so its easy
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I can't do online shopping without accepting a notification on my bank's app. That's not "social media and chat apps".
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If you use a a third party processor for payments like privacy.com or PayPal does it still need the app?
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I dont own a computer. My whole internet access is through my phone. It's necessary for me
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That definitely makes it harder. When I was first switching I still kept my smartphone, I just had it turned off in my bag. If I ran into something that needed it, I would use it and work out a long term solution later.
Now I split my time between a dumbphone and a de-google smartphone with very restricted apps. I take the smartphone out when I know its gonna be a busy day or I have errands, but for a basic day of going to work and back home, a dumbphone is fine
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I want so bad to just get a light phone II, but too many parts of my life need something from a smart phone, end to end encryption on my messages (signal or other similar apps), banking apps, even my job requires a few apps. I could maybe carry both around and use the smart phone as little as possible? But seems too much of a hassle sighs
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I carry around an iPhone 13 and an old Motorola. It's not that bad.
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I like them for being able to text and make calls. Otherwise I hate using them - a desktop computer is far easier for me.
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Just give me the bloody neurolink already, I'm ready to ascend into the hivemind
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I guess so but they are rather helpful still, so...
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My uncle doesn't have a cell phone and he has to borrow everyone's phones all the time and it's gotten to the point where people are just refusing to let him borrow their phones.
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I dont own a cellphone and get by through borrowing family member's phones or asking strangers if I can make a call if I'm out on my own, it usually works out fairly well.
However whenever I run into online services that require a phone to make an account or whatever I usually get screwed- so I usually just use a family member's phone # if I know they'll never use the site or whatever or utilize a 10 minute/fake phone # creation site if I dont care about the site or service I'm signing up for.
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To be fair you are the burden on your family here. This isn't living without - it's sticking everyone else with your problem.
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That's how I read it too. It's not "look how well I'm doing without a smart phone", it's more like "I don't want a phone, but have no issues placing the burden of my actions on others"
It's not him that gets consequences of a leaked number.
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Eh, I assure you the burden of buying a brand new 500~1000$ phone and then paying a monthly bill to provide it with service would be a far far greater burden then allowing me to use their phone to make important calls once a week if not less, and letting me use it to sign up to a site/video game maybe a couple times a year.
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276 comments