4 ms·

One could make a reasonable argument that the smartphone is the "one app" of which you speak.

by CPLX 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago
It, or rather its OS, should be. But just like desktop OSes, I feel it doesn't enforce enough interoperability beteween applications and uniformity of UX.
mafribe 10y ago
Exactly. And the phone number and/or the IMEI is the technological identifier that ties all our identities together.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Multi-SIM phones. Non-SIM (Wifi-only) phones. Multiple phone-users. There is no universal identifier. I may absolutely insist there isn't. And I strongly suspect phone tech (number-based dialing) is on its way out. For all the reasons Mossberg states, the one app I hate most is the phone, and I don't have one. Haven't for years. There are phones by which I can occasionally be reached. There's a mobile phone which occasionally has service. Both are highly deprecated.
  - mafribe 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your point. You are referring to rare edge cases that don't invalidate the general point.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      They aren't rare edge cases. Assumptions about identity tend to fail. Perversely. Badly.
      - mafribe 10y ago
        Yes, absolute assumptions about identity fail badly, as you correctly point out. My point is different: for most people the combo of phone number/IMEI and the phone as physical token is the de-facto electronically addressable social identity. All major social networks are based on this empirically observable fact. Those for whom phone/phone number/IMEI is not enough might encounter problems with the current state of social networking.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > Those for whom phone/phone number/IMEI is not enough might encounter problems with the current state of social networking. They do, and they cope. It's not that it is mathematically impossible to share a smartphone. Think of poorer families that have one mobile per household. Think of I-dont-know-what-kind-of-thinking-leads-to-that families that use a shared e-mail (or even Facebook) account. Hell, think of my younger sister who for some time borrowed smartphone from my mom, because she didn't have one but wanted to check Facebook / Instagram / whatever regularly. One device per person & one account per person is not universal when you start looking outside of tech-inclined people and their immediate families. Sure this assumption probably holds for most people, but I'd wager that the "most" here means something like 60-80%, and not 99.999%.
        mafribe 10y ago
        Nothing in social will ever be 99.999%, so what? 60-80% is enough for the network effect to overcome everything else, and for the phone/IMEI to become the de-facto standard. Just like TCP/IP/Ethernet/Wifi became the networking de-facto standard despite other networking protocols existing (and being superior in some dimensions like ATM). The remaining 20-40% will adapt. Some of them will not have their needs met. The world moves on. The interesting question is: what does the new fungibility of social software mean for the lock-in-based business model of the likes of Twitter/Facebook etc? How will they regain lock-in? Will they be able to add non-fungible features, like e.g. WeChat, or will they whither?
        dredmorbius 10y ago
dredmorbius 10y ago
It's not an app. It's a terminal to a bunch of different application services, none of which talks to each other well. In the Emacs (or unified use case), I could snarf in content (as text / JSON / whatevs) from one messaging queue / stack / channel and post it out to another or others. On mobile, options for copying and pasting text alone are horribly crippled, to say nothing of the fucking pathetic editors. E.g., G+ does not support highlighting and copying selected text or URLs from its Android app. Yes, you can copy an entire message. Then, say, past that to the six line editor window HN offers me. I've got emacs and vim on this system (Termux offers both, also a freestanding Vim client). But I cannot copy to/from the system clipboard from these. Instead, I save to the App-specific directory of another editor, open the file there, copy text, and paste it. Yeah, I've done that. Yeah, it fucking sucks. At least on desktop I can install, say, "It's All Text" as a browser extention and pop up any textarea-editable content into a preferred Real Fucking Editor and muck with it. (Infinite Internet Pointz to anyone who can suggest a way of invoking Vim with a specific set of arguments, say: ":set tw=0 linebreak wrap syn ft=markdown" just as an arbitrary example.)

One could make a reasonable argument that the smartphone is the "one app" of which you speak.

by CPLX 10y ago

One could make a reasonable argument that the smartphone is the "one app" of which you speak.

It, or rather its OS, should be. But just like desktop OSes, I feel it doesn't enforce enough interoperability beteween applications and uniformity of UX.

mafribe 10y ago

Exactly. And the phone number and/or the IMEI is the technological identifier that ties all our identities together.

dredmorbius 10y ago
Multi-SIM phones. Non-SIM (Wifi-only) phones. Multiple phone-users. There is no universal identifier. I may absolutely insist there isn't. And I strongly suspect phone tech (number-based dialing) is on its way out. For all the reasons Mossberg states, the one app I hate most is the phone, and I don't have one. Haven't for years. There are phones by which I can occasionally be reached. There's a mobile phone which occasionally has service. Both are highly deprecated.
- mafribe 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your point. You are referring to rare edge cases that don't invalidate the general point.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    They aren't rare edge cases. Assumptions about identity tend to fail. Perversely. Badly.
    - mafribe 10y ago
      Yes, absolute assumptions about identity fail badly, as you correctly point out. My point is different: for most people the combo of phone number/IMEI and the phone as physical token is the de-facto electronically addressable social identity. All major social networks are based on this empirically observable fact. Those for whom phone/phone number/IMEI is not enough might encounter problems with the current state of social networking.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > Those for whom phone/phone number/IMEI is not enough might encounter problems with the current state of social networking. They do, and they cope. It's not that it is mathematically impossible to share a smartphone. Think of poorer families that have one mobile per household. Think of I-dont-know-what-kind-of-thinking-leads-to-that families that use a shared e-mail (or even Facebook) account. Hell, think of my younger sister who for some time borrowed smartphone from my mom, because she didn't have one but wanted to check Facebook / Instagram / whatever regularly. One device per person & one account per person is not universal when you start looking outside of tech-inclined people and their immediate families. Sure this assumption probably holds for most people, but I'd wager that the "most" here means something like 60-80%, and not 99.999%.
        mafribe 10y ago
        Nothing in social will ever be 99.999%, so what? 60-80% is enough for the network effect to overcome everything else, and for the phone/IMEI to become the de-facto standard. Just like TCP/IP/Ethernet/Wifi became the networking de-facto standard despite other networking protocols existing (and being superior in some dimensions like ATM). The remaining 20-40% will adapt. Some of them will not have their needs met. The world moves on. The interesting question is: what does the new fungibility of social software mean for the lock-in-based business model of the likes of Twitter/Facebook etc? How will they regain lock-in? Will they be able to add non-fungible features, like e.g. WeChat, or will they whither?
        dredmorbius 10y ago

dredmorbius 10y ago

It's not an app. It's a terminal to a bunch of different application services, none of which talks to each other well. In the Emacs (or unified use case), I could snarf in content (as text / JSON / whatevs) from one messaging queue / stack / channel and post it out to another or others. On mobile, options for copying and pasting text alone are horribly crippled, to say nothing of the fucking pathetic editors. E.g., G+ does not support highlighting and copying selected text or URLs from its Android app. Yes, you can copy an entire message. Then, say, past that to the six line editor window HN offers me. I've got emacs and vim on this system (Termux offers both, also a freestanding Vim client). But I cannot copy to/from the system clipboard from these. Instead, I save to the App-specific directory of another editor, open the file there, copy text, and paste it. Yeah, I've done that. Yeah, it fucking sucks. At least on desktop I can install, say, "It's All Text" as a browser extention and pop up any textarea-editable content into a preferred Real Fucking Editor and muck with it. (Infinite Internet Pointz to anyone who can suggest a way of invoking Vim with a specific set of arguments, say: ":set tw=0 linebreak wrap syn ft=markdown" just as an arbitrary example.)