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> 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 you

> 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 10y 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 10y 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.

seanp2k2 10y 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 10y 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.