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I tend to leave my phone in my bag all day except to use 2-factor auth or something. I would rather stare out of the window on the train in the morning than at

I tend to leave my phone in my bag all day except to use 2-factor auth or something. I would rather stare out of the window on the train in the morning than at facebook or twitter. Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone.

natch 9y ago
>Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. I doubt your conclusions are very accurate. I suspect many of the people you see engaged with their phones are enriching their real lives, not just the life in the phone, but the life outside of the phone, by connecting with friends, arranging IRL meetings, and learning. The guy in the video was doing this to a pathological degree... projecting his own unexamined intuitions as facts about other people.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. If by "cursory" you mean "many years of close, and 24x7 observation, including of close relatives and friends", then what's not to love? It's not like people saying that are some tourists to Earth that have just some short-term cursory relationship with the "other people". At some point, there's enough observation to "jump to conclusions" about what is going on with other people. The alternative is a kind of solipsism, as if we cannot say anything and make generalizations of what we see people do ever, and can only speak for ourselves. As if everybody else is some unique snowflake that one needs to study meticulously to draw conclusions from their behavior. Or as if somehow there's some inner difference that makes their outward behavior (e.g. glued to a screen all the time, even in the most intimate situations) unfit to draw conclusions from ("Yeah, this person has his eyes glued to some BS mobile app while just 10 meters in front of them there's fireworks and naked people running around and Kanye jamming with Bruce Springsteen, KISS, Aphex Twin and Keith Jarrett on stage, but you cannot say that they're oblivious to their surroundings -- in actuality said person totally enjoys and absorbs whats going on around them"). We should be able to call a spade a space, and masses of tourists with their phones out snapping pictures of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre as uncultivated idiots.
  - RodericDay 9y ago
    There's obviously a huge amount of people addicted to their phones, and many people on HN profit off of them so they refuse to admit it. However this romantic idea that without phones people would be living vivid moments to the fullest also needs to die. Lets not romanticize the lived experience of a boring commute as a sensory roller-coaster just to score a few points against people glued to their phones. People who make arbitrary distinctions in the book/e-reader/smartphone spectrum are just wrong. Many people use their phones productively during their commutes. When I lived in Vancouver, I'm sure many people mistook me for a Candy Crusher or Facebook Scroller, but I was actually learning japanese.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >However this romantic idea that without phones people would be living vivid moments to the fullest also needs to die. Lets not romanticize the lived experience of a boring commute as a sensory roller-coaster just to score a few points against people glued to their phones. No, but the problem is that people don't just do that on "boring commutes", but screen-staring increasingly encroaches other parts of life, from concerts to dates. While at it, let's also lay to death the idea that all eras/decades/periods are the same, and everything a society does, from norms to arts, is either "the best it has ever been" or "the same as it always was", and anyone complaining is only romanticizing. There are peaks and valleys, progress and regression, in lots of social norms and output, and its worth to point them out. I mean, even when it was fashionable, they probably already suspected that the mule haircut was a bad idea...
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    Man I was in the Louve in 2001 and people were snapping tons of photos with their ~200x128 pixel phones instead of just looking at the painting. There were repros for sale reasonably right next to the real photo. Also that painting is impossible to see well due to the protection glass and there are so many better paintings just to the left or right of it, which I sadly couldn't get a good look at because everyone getting their 8 seconds in front of the Mona Lisa. Totally unrelated but I feel the louve is a massive misuse of space in a lot of cases. The room right before the lisa on one side is a massive long gallery with around a hundred gigantic (8'x12' or bigger) religious passion paintings that no one really looks at with a few gems sprinkled throughout. The other side is a very high gallery with some great paintings 20'+ up in the air. It's like the louve has so many paintings they feel it just all has to be out on display without thought about how people will look at it (or at least that section is). I found the impressionist museum much better but this is 16 years ago.
askafriend 9y ago
> Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. No, you're just jumping to conclusions that fit your imagined narrative. When I'm using my phone on the train, I'm going through my reading list or listening to podcasts. If I had a physical book in-hand, I bet you wouldn't jump to similar conclusions. Yet the activities are the same and the content is the same. People who want to waste time will waste time. Back in the day people read garbage magazines to fill that same time that they now fill with maybe Candy Crush. Everything is different and yet everything is the same and that's what people fail to realize. The difference now is accessibility. It's the 24/7 nature of it that I think is valid to critique. But the commuters who don't stare out the window now weren't staring out the window pre-smartphone era anyway. They were reading newspaper columns, gossip magazines, playing handheld games, etc. So I'm not sure your example is the best.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Back in my day, we happily stared out the window of our stagecoach at the countryside, and if we got bored, we made conversation or robbed a bank! It's interesting that the train, newspapers, magazines, handheld games, and phones are technology. They've all changed our lives in varying ways, to varying degrees. I love this stuff because it can make it easier to connect with other people. It can also be used in anti-social ways. Even now, we're on HN discussing this, and I'm doing it from my phone, as I'm sure some others are as well. We're no longer tied to occupying the same physical space to have a conversation, but a telephone also solves that. The telephone is synchronous, but written letters would solve that. Those aren't very fast, telegrams are quite a bit more involved, and computers used to sit on desks. Now I can walk through a park and read discussions like this, think about life, and still more or less carry on a conversation with other people from all over the world. It takes tons of infrastructure and countless technological innovations to make this even possible, but that's why I love technology.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Exactly. If you look at videos from the 60s of people on trams and buses, no one talked to each other back then either. There were always a handful of people with newspapers, magazines and books. By the 1980s, you'd see more people with Walkmans. It's the same thing today, except we're wasting less paper, and we can have a bigger selection of music. Yes there are additional bad things, like shopping apps/consumerism and free-to-play games that try to get that super addictable part of the market to give them tons of money for their shitty form of entertainment. But that's all in the choice of how you use things.

natch 9y ago

>Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. I doubt your conclusions are very accurate. I suspect many of the people you see engaged with their phones are enriching their real lives, not just the life in the phone, but the life outside of the phone, by connecting with friends, arranging IRL meetings, and learning. The guy in the video was doing this to a pathological degree... projecting his own unexamined intuitions as facts about other people.

coldtea 9y ago
>I just love it how people jump to conclusions about what is going on with other people, based on cursory observation. If by "cursory" you mean "many years of close, and 24x7 observation, including of close relatives and friends", then what's not to love? It's not like people saying that are some tourists to Earth that have just some short-term cursory relationship with the "other people". At some point, there's enough observation to "jump to conclusions" about what is going on with other people. The alternative is a kind of solipsism, as if we cannot say anything and make generalizations of what we see people do ever, and can only speak for ourselves. As if everybody else is some unique snowflake that one needs to study meticulously to draw conclusions from their behavior. Or as if somehow there's some inner difference that makes their outward behavior (e.g. glued to a screen all the time, even in the most intimate situations) unfit to draw conclusions from ("Yeah, this person has his eyes glued to some BS mobile app while just 10 meters in front of them there's fireworks and naked people running around and Kanye jamming with Bruce Springsteen, KISS, Aphex Twin and Keith Jarrett on stage, but you cannot say that they're oblivious to their surroundings -- in actuality said person totally enjoys and absorbs whats going on around them"). We should be able to call a spade a space, and masses of tourists with their phones out snapping pictures of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre as uncultivated idiots.
- RodericDay 9y ago
  There's obviously a huge amount of people addicted to their phones, and many people on HN profit off of them so they refuse to admit it. However this romantic idea that without phones people would be living vivid moments to the fullest also needs to die. Lets not romanticize the lived experience of a boring commute as a sensory roller-coaster just to score a few points against people glued to their phones. People who make arbitrary distinctions in the book/e-reader/smartphone spectrum are just wrong. Many people use their phones productively during their commutes. When I lived in Vancouver, I'm sure many people mistook me for a Candy Crusher or Facebook Scroller, but I was actually learning japanese.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >However this romantic idea that without phones people would be living vivid moments to the fullest also needs to die. Lets not romanticize the lived experience of a boring commute as a sensory roller-coaster just to score a few points against people glued to their phones. No, but the problem is that people don't just do that on "boring commutes", but screen-staring increasingly encroaches other parts of life, from concerts to dates. While at it, let's also lay to death the idea that all eras/decades/periods are the same, and everything a society does, from norms to arts, is either "the best it has ever been" or "the same as it always was", and anyone complaining is only romanticizing. There are peaks and valleys, progress and regression, in lots of social norms and output, and its worth to point them out. I mean, even when it was fashionable, they probably already suspected that the mule haircut was a bad idea...
- grogenaut 9y ago
  Man I was in the Louve in 2001 and people were snapping tons of photos with their ~200x128 pixel phones instead of just looking at the painting. There were repros for sale reasonably right next to the real photo. Also that painting is impossible to see well due to the protection glass and there are so many better paintings just to the left or right of it, which I sadly couldn't get a good look at because everyone getting their 8 seconds in front of the Mona Lisa. Totally unrelated but I feel the louve is a massive misuse of space in a lot of cases. The room right before the lisa on one side is a massive long gallery with around a hundred gigantic (8'x12' or bigger) religious passion paintings that no one really looks at with a few gems sprinkled throughout. The other side is a very high gallery with some great paintings 20'+ up in the air. It's like the louve has so many paintings they feel it just all has to be out on display without thought about how people will look at it (or at least that section is). I found the impressionist museum much better but this is 16 years ago.

askafriend 9y ago

> Instead of people using technology to magnify their lives, they are confining their lives to their phone. No, you're just jumping to conclusions that fit your imagined narrative. When I'm using my phone on the train, I'm going through my reading list or listening to podcasts. If I had a physical book in-hand, I bet you wouldn't jump to similar conclusions. Yet the activities are the same and the content is the same. People who want to waste time will waste time. Back in the day people read garbage magazines to fill that same time that they now fill with maybe Candy Crush. Everything is different and yet everything is the same and that's what people fail to realize. The difference now is accessibility. It's the 24/7 nature of it that I think is valid to critique. But the commuters who don't stare out the window now weren't staring out the window pre-smartphone era anyway. They were reading newspaper columns, gossip magazines, playing handheld games, etc. So I'm not sure your example is the best.

seanp2k2 9y ago
Back in my day, we happily stared out the window of our stagecoach at the countryside, and if we got bored, we made conversation or robbed a bank! It's interesting that the train, newspapers, magazines, handheld games, and phones are technology. They've all changed our lives in varying ways, to varying degrees. I love this stuff because it can make it easier to connect with other people. It can also be used in anti-social ways. Even now, we're on HN discussing this, and I'm doing it from my phone, as I'm sure some others are as well. We're no longer tied to occupying the same physical space to have a conversation, but a telephone also solves that. The telephone is synchronous, but written letters would solve that. Those aren't very fast, telegrams are quite a bit more involved, and computers used to sit on desks. Now I can walk through a park and read discussions like this, think about life, and still more or less carry on a conversation with other people from all over the world. It takes tons of infrastructure and countless technological innovations to make this even possible, but that's why I love technology.
djsumdog 9y ago
Exactly. If you look at videos from the 60s of people on trams and buses, no one talked to each other back then either. There were always a handful of people with newspapers, magazines and books. By the 1980s, you'd see more people with Walkmans. It's the same thing today, except we're wasting less paper, and we can have a bigger selection of music. Yes there are additional bad things, like shopping apps/consumerism and free-to-play games that try to get that super addictable part of the market to give them tons of money for their shitty form of entertainment. But that's all in the choice of how you use things.