9 ms·

Save Your Sanity, Downgrade Your Life

55 points by devy 9y ago

Overtonwindow 9y ago
Another way of looking at this is tangibility. I think people are starting to become nostalgic for simpler devices, things they can wrap their heads around and grasp how they work. Today's technology can be overwhelming to many, and might find comfort in old school.
- andyjsantamaria 9y ago
  Agreed. I think the author is swinging pretty far on the spectrum and there is a balance. Definitely considering if your need vs want something and making that tradeoff intelligently. I have a kindle and read a lot of books. It's a few generations old and doesn't really need to get updated. Cell phones can be really addicting to the point where I'm not even really doing anything on it, just staring and touching buttons. I don't have it in the bedroom because then I'd never get to sleep.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  >>> things they can wrap their heads around and grasp how they work For me this is a synonym of "things they can repair, modify", that is, things they control. Maybe we feel a threshold here (threshold because this all started long ago). Society advanced so much (to me) that anything you look at is now super advanced (be it technological, organizational, commercial). And therefore, much less controllable by oneself.
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    That's my exact understanding as well, thank you. I feel the tech slips into way too much complexity. I feel better if I can repair something or at least understand why it's not working well.
tjr 9y ago
A curious first example. I too have found that my teeth get and stay cleaner using an electric toothbrush. While many technological wonders infiltrating our lives today are at best conveniences -- and often just distractions -- why not embrace one that genuinely improves our physical well-being, encumbered with (as far as I know) nothing in the way of undesirable side-effects?
- overcast 9y ago
  One of the top five best tech gadgets I've bought in my entire life was my electronic toothbrush. It's like going for a dentist cleaning everyday! Seriously, it rocks.
  - brador 9y ago
    What were the other 4?
    - overcast 9y ago
      Besides a computer. In chronological order, probably NES/SNES tossup, Walkman/Discman, Nikon DSLR, iPhone. I would say those were most influential in my life, for better or worse.
- ashark 9y ago
  The electric toothbrush is one of those "holy crap how did I live without this?!" things for me. First time I used it my teeth felt as if I'd had a professional cleaning. No amount of manual brushing gets them as clean as even a lazy, quick pass with the electric. How manual toothbrushes are still A Thing outside of camping supply stores baffles me, now that I know how good electric toothbrushes are.
  - 1001101 9y ago
    I had the same reaction to the toothbrush example, and feel the same way about electric toothbrushes. More than anecdotes, there are studies that demonstrate their efficacy. The criteria the author chooses for what gets downgraded weren't clearly enumerated, but I got the impression that it was because something was 'distracting.' I don't find my electric toothbrush to be a distraction any more than a manual. It seemed a bit arbitrary, like, I downgraded my car to this horse drawn carriage.
rich_ard 9y ago
I recently downgraded to a flip phone and it has been wonderful. I missed Google Maps for transit during a trip to NYC, but otherwise it's been great - not being leashed to the internet by my own lack of self-control is wonderful.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Thank you for being open about your own lack of control with the internet. You're not alone.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  I'm still on a smartphone, but I took away notification permissions from anything that doesn't need it. It's helped a lot with not looking at my phone more than I want to. If anybody wants an intermediate step before you switch back to a flip phone, give this a shot. Looking at you, Facebook, with your "Somebody you don't actually care about posted for the first time in a while."
  - zwily 9y ago
    I did the same for Facebook - no more notifications. Unfortunately, that also stops notifications from Messenger which I'd prefer to get, but oh well.
    - wlesieutre 9y ago
      They're separate apps, not sure why you don't get them from messenger. I've left that one's notification access open because at least for now it only uses them for someone sending me a message. Fingers cross they don't move the "SOMEBODY JUST WENT LIVE WITH VIDEO!!!!" over to that.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      I uninstalled the Facebook app, and use the website. It's 90% as good in functionality, and 1000% better in what it can and cannot do with data on my phone. (If you post and comment regularly, you may prefer the app. I mostly use the site for casual browsing, and checking the address of events I'm on my way to.)
hockeybias 9y ago
I take weekend-long vacations from email from time to time. Easy and nice!
0xCMP 9y ago
There is a lot of overwhelm these days. It's not just our devices: peak tv, never ending YouTube videos, endless tweets, and a web we can never fully explore. We live in overwhelming times. The key is not to simply downgrade ourselves, but to focus our selves. Practically applying minimalism to our lives to focus on what matters in our lives and sensibly removing things when they aren't adding value.
- ashark 9y ago
  > There is a lot of overwhelm these days. It's not just our devices: peak tv, never ending YouTube videos, endless tweets, and a web we can never fully explore. Endless everything. You can even apply qualifiers like "excellent" and still have a set of things that may as well be endless. There's an as-credible-as-one-could-hope-for top-1000 (one thousand!) movies meta-list out there, and there are more really, really good films than can fit on even such a long list. That's about a year of work, as in 40-hour work weeks, watching films, and that's just for one pass, when most of these are the sorts of things that reward repeat viewing. Realistically that's a lifetime of cinema for most people, without watching any low quality content—or anything newer than the first version of that list that was released. And it's all accessible. The overwhelming majority of the list can be watch with, at worst, a 2-day wait for Prime shipping. You can go ahead and watch ten or so others on streaming services while you wait for that to arrive. Legitimately-good TV is coming out faster than most people can watch it, unless high-quality TV shows are practically your only entertainment. A giant percentage of all recorded music ever can be accessed in seconds to minutes, and more with the aforementioned 2-day shipping wait. An idea Vonnegut explored at least a couple times is that recorded media killed the value of (relatively) mundane creative expression by putting everyone in competition with the greats in a given field, and that the lives of those who might have given some joy and been valued by their community for their small talents are deeply, negatively affected by this. Now the greats are constantly in competition with all the other greats, from all time, and our major problem and a source of anxiety is figuring out what's the very best thing out of all these excellent things we can enjoy in each moment. Opinions on those topics are subject to the exact same forces and accessibility, ouroboros-like. The level of choice is crippling, and I don't think it's actually improving most people's lives over a world with at least a little more friction to flitting between excellent entertainment—the distraction of it all, and its addictive power, both inherent and deliberately added through UI that drives engagement, is probably making things worse in some ways. Maybe the video store wasn't so bad. Maybe the books at the local library were pretty good. Maybe spending a good long time with one record you picked up and are really enjoying is better than knowing that popular opinion holds it's a middling album by that band, so instead you listen to a plausible top-ten albums in that genre from this year (none of which are by that band you liked... in fact why did you like them if they're so bad? That's embarrassing) once or twice each. Do you feel any better? Is your life actually richer? Can this kind of relationship with media and entertainment even be enriching? You can still behave like that of course, but damned if the possibility that there's something better, and the near-certaintly of being able to quickly act on new information, isn't a nearly irresistible temptation. Maybe you should google this before you pick it up. What does metacritic say? And so on. And don't even get me started on data hoarding. Fear of death made manifest in mountains of data we can't hope to process or appreciate. Better go check my backups. May need a bigger drive. Some day I'm totally going to relive my childhood with a marathon of all these pirated tvrips of shows that'll never be released again for licensing reasons. If bitrot or a drive crash eats them or, god forbid, I delete them, I may never find them again and they'll be gone forever—forever! Just like so many things used to be just a couple decades ago, and like everything was that couldn't be written down a century and a half ago, all the way back to the dawn of recorded (!) history. I really should find a couple hundred hours to sort these directories of family photos and pare them down to a smaller, comprehensible set. Maybe move—not delete, then I'd never see them again if I wanted to!—mediocre ones out of the way. Not now though. Just thinking about all of them makes me anxious. Thank god we have them, though, rather than a cherished shoebox full of polaroids. They're so very important.
EADGBE 9y ago
There's a reason I still play 60-year-old guitars through tube amps and other ratty old gear. It's kinda my escape from 1's and 0's. Sometimes I'm convinced we dove too fast into this whole digital everything, thing.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  Entirely too fast. We have no idea what we are doing.
- _hobo 9y ago
  I share your sentiment, but the profiling amps are coming along (Kemper, two notes speaker emulators, etc)
  - EADGBE 9y ago
    They're scary good.
- mortenjorck 9y ago
  Music is an evergreen respite, and I love to play with the sound of analog. But I'm under no illusions: I almost exclusively use digital models of analog gear. The technology was already to the point of effectively indistinguishable 15 years ago, and modern emulations border on lovingly obsessive overkill. I will never own a Yamaha CS-80. The extraordinary bulk, unreliability, and expense make the signature synth of Vangelis unpalatable in every way but its sound. But the software version I use captures that effervescent analog flutter to a better degree than I can possibly discern, and it all fits on my MacBook.
  - EADGBE 9y ago
    It sure does have its convenience going for it. But like the hipster with their vinyl; I still yearn for that electric glow of vacuum tubes. It doesn't make sense - it doesn't have to - the tactility of it all is an experience in its own. Like a manual toothbrush.
- mikestew 9y ago
Shank 9y ago
> The kids themselves don’t get phones at all. When my 12-year-old daughter walks home from school without one, I intentionally have no idea where she is, just like nobody knew where kids were when I was growing up. How rare it is these days not to be able to know something. Brilliant, but she's 12. There's an astounding difference between "knowing where my daughter is" and "enabling my daughter to call for help (e.g., 911) if she's in an emergency." You don't have to be a helicopter parent and track her location to give her the ability to have a tangible, modern benefit of a phone: the ability to immediately have police or paramedics if she needs them.
- xxXXxx- 9y ago
  A $10 dumb phone without any service allows for 911 calls.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    That just seems silly. Not everything needs 911, and payphones aren't all that common anymore. Not to mention the missed opportunity to teach about responsible use... and the opportunity to enjoy the convenience as parents. For example, a kid calling home to let them know when a school event is over, especially if the child can leave early.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >There's an astounding difference between "knowing where my daughter is" and "enabling my daughter to call for help (e.g., 911) if she's in an emergency." And why is that important, since we've managed to survive without that capability for several tens of thousands of years in much worse circumstances than a modern city?
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    Because we are programmed to do everything to make sure we survive and our children survive. Even when the threat level is super low it's hard to lose the instinct. Hence why terrorism scares people who then go and buy a lottery ticket. We're bad at probability!
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Everything is good in moderation. I have begun banning myself from sites like HN or putting my cell phone in do not disturb mode. I am not sure why these vapid "productivity posts" only have either or options and why it must be 100% one side or another.
- eponeponepon 9y ago
  This is the key. "Moderation in all things, including moderation" is the most important advice my late father gave me. I will freely admit that this is advice that occasionally gives me cause to grumble at him when hungover.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  I did something similar. I picked up another hobby, and avoid these sites for all but a tiny window during the day. A while back I found myself wasting 4+ hours every night at home, "looking for something to do" online. This usually involved a lot of Steam, Reddit, etc. Never doing anything real, always wasting time. So I forced myself to pick up another hobby that will hopefully not share too much with the tired regions of my brain (i.e., programming work days). My goal is to fill my day with life improving things that I enjoy, but don't overlap is skillsets. Hopefully reducing fatigue. The last thing I want is to burn out on programming because I force myself to do that non-stop at home too. I'm just sick of wasting time.
- loco5niner 9y ago
  > Everything is good in moderation I would add "and in the correct context"
- pdimitar 9y ago
  My phone is almost always on DND and the apps that can send notifications are somewhere between 6 to 11 -- and I'll probably reduce them only to Slack and email these days. The weak points in the article you pointed out, plus the self-shaming the author does -- "I feel bad about it" -- don't help. Extremism doesn't help. One has to discover what works best for them, not being an extremist. And no, being an extremist doesn't work (well, maybe for 0.0001% of the world population).
softwaredoug 9y ago
I put my twitter password behind a hash function that takes a good 10 minutes to run. So current me can make future me a lot more productive by hitting "log out". Future me usually turns out lazy enough to actually just do work!
- tbirrell 9y ago
  How does this work? Do you change it every time you log in? Or do you just force yourself to not look at or save the password each time you retrieve it?
  - bigmanwalter 9y ago
    He probably uses a randomly generated password that he doesn't bother memorizing and which he copy/pastes.
  - xxXXxx- 9y ago
    Password I know -> hash function (probably with millions or billions of iterations) -> Twitter password that I don't know. Not peeking at the Twitter password is a non-issue, people don't generally memorize the output of hash functions, even if they wanted to, they are a long string of random characters. Here's an example: the SHA256 hash of your username is 328BFB7DEAB24355A7A0D2377AB8DEF70D8DECF968E90AA507D590ACDD25A7AC if you were to then hash 328BFB7DEAB24355A7A0D2377AB8DEF70D8DECF968E90AA507D590ACDD25A7AC you'd get 227D82D075605DE042164082145FC7D296DF20C4BAAA2834B5541182C0D13051. Hash that and get 2062A298907588A3045EE89D9C366C64097924BC50F48981CF4A736B9BB093DF. Now repeat that process a billion or so times and you'll calculate your Twitter password. This is a really great idea, it's literally impossible to overcome the restriction.
    - hammock 9y ago
      >it's literally impossible to overcome the restriction "Would you like to save this password?" "Yes"
      - 9y ago
NDizzle 9y ago
DVDs?! Movies on physical objects?! shudder
rhapsodic 9y ago
My maternal grandparents lived well into the age of microwave ovens and cable TV, yet they never owned or subscribed to either. Nothing could convince them they were missing anything worthwhile. It made no sense at all to me. Now, I sort of understand. I'm not rabidly anti-technology, but I avoid a lot of the fashionable latest stuff like Facebook, smart watches, fitbits, Twitter, Spotify, etc. It's hard to explain to friends who ask why. It's basically a matter of mental bandwidth. It's not infinite. Every thing that demands a piece of my attention must take that attention away from something else. And I guess these things are not worth that cost to me. I don't judge people who think otherwise; that's just what works best for me personally.
- pmiller2 9y ago
  That's funny. I have neither a microwave, nor cable TV. I'm currently looking for a used microwave, but I have no desire whatsoever to get cable TV. My phone is currently 3 years old, and I don't really have a ton of gadgets beyond said phone and a laptop.
- Ao7bei3s 9y ago
  If you want to save mental bandwidth, I really recommend you reconsider not using Spotify. Spotify actually frees me from the "what music do I hear in the background" question, manually rearranging playlists, acquiring music and, worst of all, manually keeping my collection tagged. Before I had Spotify, I wasted evenings tagging everything with Picard... With Spotify, you just give it a starting point, start "song radio" and it'll keep playing and choosing next tracks. You can easily and very comfortably get through the day with only a play/pause hotkey and a next track hotkey. As a bonus, it just carries over between work, phone and home.
kristianc 9y ago
I can see this becoming a form of status-signalling in years to come (if it is not already?) Just as a sign of status for the CEO used to be the ability to disappear off to the golf course for a few hours, the new status might be the ability to be effectively inaccessible. The rest of us will have to put up with companies deliberately manipulating "habit forming" type behaviours to push their products. [1] [1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Or folks will be so in-tune with their connected ways that a service which "allows" you to disappear is more apparent than just throwing your phone off a bridge.
notananthem 9y ago
Book reviewer runs from technology. Surprise. Considering I have poor dental hygiene I upgraded to a base model electric toothbrush and have never been healthier. Terrible advice/article. I don't have a lot of fanciful gadgets but those I do have purpose.
sixdimensional 9y ago
Sometimes I wonder philosophically, how it is that electronics and digital systems - essentially, electrified/energized systems of some kind, have addictive and confounding properties to advancing societies and humans, similar to the way oil/petroleum/gas is to our way of life? Oil/petroleum/gas have huge societal and human benefits, and yet, so many negative side effects (climate change, pollution, war, etc.) and complications. "Energy" has these challenges, like many natural resources. sigh I can't quite find the right words.. The electrification / "energization" of things seems to add this tangible quality of also being confounding, complicating and somehow exhausting to us. It's like when you are walking out in nature somewhere remote, say, in a forest, where all you see are trees and rocks and rivers/streams, and breathe fresh air. There is something about this natural/analog state of being that can soothe us (although, nature can be quite alarming too). Books, analog toothbrushes, un-powered hand tools... things like this seem (in my opinion) to help humans feel... more human (and in control). There was a moment of this kind of feeling of awe of nature that was so amazing the other day when the eclipse happened in the US. A moment where it was like, everyone put down their phones, their lives, their problems and... just observed this phenomenon of beauty. It was simple and fleeting, but wonderful. I think the author is onto something here, but it's hard to say it in words. Is it an awakening of humanity within the digital age? A recognition of nature and humanity as something to balance with energy, digital, electronic? It definitely seems we are on this kind of a path. Lest we forget that, it would not be the first time that there have been "awakenings" and "enlightenment" in humanity's history. For example, in western cultures - [1] [2], and certainly others in other cultures. It seems there is something to be learned from history here. [1] The age of enlightment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment [2] The great awakening (religious context): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Great_Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Great_Awakening
- observation 9y ago
  I think you would be interested in Biophilic Design. https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/ https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/
  - 9y ago
didibus 9y ago
Or learn some self control and restraint.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  No idea why you're downvoted. There will always be a corporation out there that feeds on our primal instincts and trying to addict us to their products. That ain't ever going away. That's why teaching yourself restraint is hugely important these days. Guess many people haven't reached the mental state in which they recognize this truth.
quake 9y ago
There are some things in this article that I can definitely identify with, mainly the 'old laptop' that she was talking about, but an electric toothbrush??? That's hardly the notification-blasting brain-melter that she so despises. I'd certainly go back to a flip-phone if they had cameras like current smartphones.
chadash 9y ago
As a Sabbath observant Jew, I can relate to this article. I'm thankful for having one day a week without technology. It means that for 52 days a year, I get to not worry about checking my email; Spend time with friends and family in person, and have sit down meals where no one dares check their phone[1]. And it's great. But it really only works because of the communal aspects of it: Other members of my community are doing the same thing. Still, I recommend that everyone cut out some time during the year (maybe during a week of vacation) where they "cut the cord". You don't have to go all in. For example, maybe keep your cellphone with you, but disconnect your email account and don't send texts. 1[] We often have people over for Friday night dinners who aren't Sabbath observant. If someone pulls out their phone, I'll try to politely ask them to go to a different room if they want to use it or otherwise put it away.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  So using technology means not seeing your friends and family? Is being a member of a religious society the only way? I don't think so. I am quite successful in taming my tech in a very rigorous manner and I am indeed less stressed person for it.
  - chadash 9y ago
    So using technology means not seeing your friends and family? Of course not. But a common problem I see is that people are glued to their phones/email, even when they are with family or friends. Before cellphones, there was the problem of people being glued to the TV instead of sitting down to meals with family. So yes, I think there are cases where technology impairs social relationships. Is being a member of a religious society the only way? No, it's not. It's just one way. Cutting access to my phone/texts/emails one a week is (in my mind) a positive side effect of my religious practices. But I think that anyone, religious or not, can benefit from being "off the grid" once in a while. For me, it certainly helps having a community of people living nearby who are also off-the-grid at the same time as me, since it means that everyone is available at the same time for in-person social interactions. Going off the grid isn't hard. Getting others to go off the grid at the same time as you often is.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pdimitar 9y ago
The article is too extreme. And gives bad examples (the electric toothbrush is proven to improve dental health of many people, me included). In general however, it's correct. But I don't go 100% this side or the other side. I find that to be irrational... hm, let me just be fully honest: I find that to be stupid. I crippled most of my smartphone apps' permissions and notification access and I am a happier person for it. Most apps want to "drive up engagement" so they spam you with whatever. I simply don't allow it. I use my smartphone to read books and articles I am really interested in, to collect digital art I enjoy, and do an occasional social network consumption -- but never above a certain time threshold (which is different for everyone). Also watch videos and lectures. It's a very positive experience after I fine-tuned it for myself, which everyone is supposed to do anyway, IMO. We shouldn't be extremists. Smartphones and most modern tech have very valid uses. But we have to resist the addictions. It's actually pretty easy.

55 points by devy 9y ago

Another way of looking at this is tangibility. I think people are starting to become nostalgic for simpler devices, things they can wrap their heads around and grasp how they work. Today's technology can be overwhelming to many, and might find comfort in old school.

andyjsantamaria 9y ago
Agreed. I think the author is swinging pretty far on the spectrum and there is a balance. Definitely considering if your need vs want something and making that tradeoff intelligently. I have a kindle and read a lot of books. It's a few generations old and doesn't really need to get updated. Cell phones can be really addicting to the point where I'm not even really doing anything on it, just staring and touching buttons. I don't have it in the bedroom because then I'd never get to sleep.
wiz21c 9y ago
>>> things they can wrap their heads around and grasp how they work For me this is a synonym of "things they can repair, modify", that is, things they control. Maybe we feel a threshold here (threshold because this all started long ago). Society advanced so much (to me) that anything you look at is now super advanced (be it technological, organizational, commercial). And therefore, much less controllable by oneself.
- pdimitar 9y ago
  That's my exact understanding as well, thank you. I feel the tech slips into way too much complexity. I feel better if I can repair something or at least understand why it's not working well.

tjr 9y ago

A curious first example. I too have found that my teeth get and stay cleaner using an electric toothbrush. While many technological wonders infiltrating our lives today are at best conveniences -- and often just distractions -- why not embrace one that genuinely improves our physical well-being, encumbered with (as far as I know) nothing in the way of undesirable side-effects?

overcast 9y ago
One of the top five best tech gadgets I've bought in my entire life was my electronic toothbrush. It's like going for a dentist cleaning everyday! Seriously, it rocks.
- brador 9y ago
  What were the other 4?
  - overcast 9y ago
    Besides a computer. In chronological order, probably NES/SNES tossup, Walkman/Discman, Nikon DSLR, iPhone. I would say those were most influential in my life, for better or worse.
ashark 9y ago
The electric toothbrush is one of those "holy crap how did I live without this?!" things for me. First time I used it my teeth felt as if I'd had a professional cleaning. No amount of manual brushing gets them as clean as even a lazy, quick pass with the electric. How manual toothbrushes are still A Thing outside of camping supply stores baffles me, now that I know how good electric toothbrushes are.
- 1001101 9y ago
  I had the same reaction to the toothbrush example, and feel the same way about electric toothbrushes. More than anecdotes, there are studies that demonstrate their efficacy. The criteria the author chooses for what gets downgraded weren't clearly enumerated, but I got the impression that it was because something was 'distracting.' I don't find my electric toothbrush to be a distraction any more than a manual. It seemed a bit arbitrary, like, I downgraded my car to this horse drawn carriage.

rich_ard 9y ago

I recently downgraded to a flip phone and it has been wonderful. I missed Google Maps for transit during a trip to NYC, but otherwise it's been great - not being leashed to the internet by my own lack of self-control is wonderful.

EADGBE 9y ago
Thank you for being open about your own lack of control with the internet. You're not alone.
wlesieutre 9y ago
I'm still on a smartphone, but I took away notification permissions from anything that doesn't need it. It's helped a lot with not looking at my phone more than I want to. If anybody wants an intermediate step before you switch back to a flip phone, give this a shot. Looking at you, Facebook, with your "Somebody you don't actually care about posted for the first time in a while."
- zwily 9y ago
  I did the same for Facebook - no more notifications. Unfortunately, that also stops notifications from Messenger which I'd prefer to get, but oh well.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    They're separate apps, not sure why you don't get them from messenger. I've left that one's notification access open because at least for now it only uses them for someone sending me a message. Fingers cross they don't move the "SOMEBODY JUST WENT LIVE WITH VIDEO!!!!" over to that.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    I uninstalled the Facebook app, and use the website. It's 90% as good in functionality, and 1000% better in what it can and cannot do with data on my phone. (If you post and comment regularly, you may prefer the app. I mostly use the site for casual browsing, and checking the address of events I'm on my way to.)

hockeybias 9y ago

I take weekend-long vacations from email from time to time. Easy and nice!

0xCMP 9y ago

There is a lot of overwhelm these days. It's not just our devices: peak tv, never ending YouTube videos, endless tweets, and a web we can never fully explore. We live in overwhelming times. The key is not to simply downgrade ourselves, but to focus our selves. Practically applying minimalism to our lives to focus on what matters in our lives and sensibly removing things when they aren't adding value.

ashark 9y ago
> There is a lot of overwhelm these days. It's not just our devices: peak tv, never ending YouTube videos, endless tweets, and a web we can never fully explore. Endless everything. You can even apply qualifiers like "excellent" and still have a set of things that may as well be endless. There's an as-credible-as-one-could-hope-for top-1000 (one thousand!) movies meta-list out there, and there are more really, really good films than can fit on even such a long list. That's about a year of work, as in 40-hour work weeks, watching films, and that's just for one pass, when most of these are the sorts of things that reward repeat viewing. Realistically that's a lifetime of cinema for most people, without watching any low quality content—or anything newer than the first version of that list that was released. And it's all accessible. The overwhelming majority of the list can be watch with, at worst, a 2-day wait for Prime shipping. You can go ahead and watch ten or so others on streaming services while you wait for that to arrive. Legitimately-good TV is coming out faster than most people can watch it, unless high-quality TV shows are practically your only entertainment. A giant percentage of all recorded music ever can be accessed in seconds to minutes, and more with the aforementioned 2-day shipping wait. An idea Vonnegut explored at least a couple times is that recorded media killed the value of (relatively) mundane creative expression by putting everyone in competition with the greats in a given field, and that the lives of those who might have given some joy and been valued by their community for their small talents are deeply, negatively affected by this. Now the greats are constantly in competition with all the other greats, from all time, and our major problem and a source of anxiety is figuring out what's the very best thing out of all these excellent things we can enjoy in each moment. Opinions on those topics are subject to the exact same forces and accessibility, ouroboros-like. The level of choice is crippling, and I don't think it's actually improving most people's lives over a world with at least a little more friction to flitting between excellent entertainment—the distraction of it all, and its addictive power, both inherent and deliberately added through UI that drives engagement, is probably making things worse in some ways. Maybe the video store wasn't so bad. Maybe the books at the local library were pretty good. Maybe spending a good long time with one record you picked up and are really enjoying is better than knowing that popular opinion holds it's a middling album by that band, so instead you listen to a plausible top-ten albums in that genre from this year (none of which are by that band you liked... in fact why did you like them if they're so bad? That's embarrassing) once or twice each. Do you feel any better? Is your life actually richer? Can this kind of relationship with media and entertainment even be enriching? You can still behave like that of course, but damned if the possibility that there's something better, and the near-certaintly of being able to quickly act on new information, isn't a nearly irresistible temptation. Maybe you should google this before you pick it up. What does metacritic say? And so on. And don't even get me started on data hoarding. Fear of death made manifest in mountains of data we can't hope to process or appreciate. Better go check my backups. May need a bigger drive. Some day I'm totally going to relive my childhood with a marathon of all these pirated tvrips of shows that'll never be released again for licensing reasons. If bitrot or a drive crash eats them or, god forbid, I delete them, I may never find them again and they'll be gone forever—forever! Just like so many things used to be just a couple decades ago, and like everything was that couldn't be written down a century and a half ago, all the way back to the dawn of recorded (!) history. I really should find a couple hundred hours to sort these directories of family photos and pare them down to a smaller, comprehensible set. Maybe move—not delete, then I'd never see them again if I wanted to!—mediocre ones out of the way. Not now though. Just thinking about all of them makes me anxious. Thank god we have them, though, rather than a cherished shoebox full of polaroids. They're so very important.

EADGBE 9y ago

There's a reason I still play 60-year-old guitars through tube amps and other ratty old gear. It's kinda my escape from 1's and 0's. Sometimes I'm convinced we dove too fast into this whole digital everything, thing.

graphitezepp 9y ago
Entirely too fast. We have no idea what we are doing.
_hobo 9y ago
I share your sentiment, but the profiling amps are coming along (Kemper, two notes speaker emulators, etc)
- EADGBE 9y ago
  They're scary good.
mortenjorck 9y ago
Music is an evergreen respite, and I love to play with the sound of analog. But I'm under no illusions: I almost exclusively use digital models of analog gear. The technology was already to the point of effectively indistinguishable 15 years ago, and modern emulations border on lovingly obsessive overkill. I will never own a Yamaha CS-80. The extraordinary bulk, unreliability, and expense make the signature synth of Vangelis unpalatable in every way but its sound. But the software version I use captures that effervescent analog flutter to a better degree than I can possibly discern, and it all fits on my MacBook.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  It sure does have its convenience going for it. But like the hipster with their vinyl; I still yearn for that electric glow of vacuum tubes. It doesn't make sense - it doesn't have to - the tactility of it all is an experience in its own. Like a manual toothbrush.
mikestew 9y ago

Shank 9y ago

> The kids themselves don’t get phones at all. When my 12-year-old daughter walks home from school without one, I intentionally have no idea where she is, just like nobody knew where kids were when I was growing up. How rare it is these days not to be able to know something. Brilliant, but she's 12. There's an astounding difference between "knowing where my daughter is" and "enabling my daughter to call for help (e.g., 911) if she's in an emergency." You don't have to be a helicopter parent and track her location to give her the ability to have a tangible, modern benefit of a phone: the ability to immediately have police or paramedics if she needs them.

xxXXxx- 9y ago
A $10 dumb phone without any service allows for 911 calls.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  That just seems silly. Not everything needs 911, and payphones aren't all that common anymore. Not to mention the missed opportunity to teach about responsible use... and the opportunity to enjoy the convenience as parents. For example, a kid calling home to let them know when a school event is over, especially if the child can leave early.
coldtea 9y ago
>There's an astounding difference between "knowing where my daughter is" and "enabling my daughter to call for help (e.g., 911) if she's in an emergency." And why is that important, since we've managed to survive without that capability for several tens of thousands of years in much worse circumstances than a modern city?
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Because we are programmed to do everything to make sure we survive and our children survive. Even when the threat level is super low it's hard to lose the instinct. Hence why terrorism scares people who then go and buy a lottery ticket. We're bad at probability!

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Everything is good in moderation. I have begun banning myself from sites like HN or putting my cell phone in do not disturb mode. I am not sure why these vapid "productivity posts" only have either or options and why it must be 100% one side or another.

eponeponepon 9y ago
This is the key. "Moderation in all things, including moderation" is the most important advice my late father gave me. I will freely admit that this is advice that occasionally gives me cause to grumble at him when hungover.
notheguyouthink 9y ago
I did something similar. I picked up another hobby, and avoid these sites for all but a tiny window during the day. A while back I found myself wasting 4+ hours every night at home, "looking for something to do" online. This usually involved a lot of Steam, Reddit, etc. Never doing anything real, always wasting time. So I forced myself to pick up another hobby that will hopefully not share too much with the tired regions of my brain (i.e., programming work days). My goal is to fill my day with life improving things that I enjoy, but don't overlap is skillsets. Hopefully reducing fatigue. The last thing I want is to burn out on programming because I force myself to do that non-stop at home too. I'm just sick of wasting time.
loco5niner 9y ago
> Everything is good in moderation I would add "and in the correct context"
pdimitar 9y ago
My phone is almost always on DND and the apps that can send notifications are somewhere between 6 to 11 -- and I'll probably reduce them only to Slack and email these days. The weak points in the article you pointed out, plus the self-shaming the author does -- "I feel bad about it" -- don't help. Extremism doesn't help. One has to discover what works best for them, not being an extremist. And no, being an extremist doesn't work (well, maybe for 0.0001% of the world population).

softwaredoug 9y ago

I put my twitter password behind a hash function that takes a good 10 minutes to run. So current me can make future me a lot more productive by hitting "log out". Future me usually turns out lazy enough to actually just do work!

tbirrell 9y ago
How does this work? Do you change it every time you log in? Or do you just force yourself to not look at or save the password each time you retrieve it?
- bigmanwalter 9y ago
  He probably uses a randomly generated password that he doesn't bother memorizing and which he copy/pastes.
- xxXXxx- 9y ago
  Password I know -> hash function (probably with millions or billions of iterations) -> Twitter password that I don't know. Not peeking at the Twitter password is a non-issue, people don't generally memorize the output of hash functions, even if they wanted to, they are a long string of random characters. Here's an example: the SHA256 hash of your username is 328BFB7DEAB24355A7A0D2377AB8DEF70D8DECF968E90AA507D590ACDD25A7AC if you were to then hash 328BFB7DEAB24355A7A0D2377AB8DEF70D8DECF968E90AA507D590ACDD25A7AC you'd get 227D82D075605DE042164082145FC7D296DF20C4BAAA2834B5541182C0D13051. Hash that and get 2062A298907588A3045EE89D9C366C64097924BC50F48981CF4A736B9BB093DF. Now repeat that process a billion or so times and you'll calculate your Twitter password. This is a really great idea, it's literally impossible to overcome the restriction.
  - hammock 9y ago
    >it's literally impossible to overcome the restriction "Would you like to save this password?" "Yes"
    - 9y ago

NDizzle 9y ago

DVDs?! Movies on physical objects?! shudder

rhapsodic 9y ago

My maternal grandparents lived well into the age of microwave ovens and cable TV, yet they never owned or subscribed to either. Nothing could convince them they were missing anything worthwhile. It made no sense at all to me. Now, I sort of understand. I'm not rabidly anti-technology, but I avoid a lot of the fashionable latest stuff like Facebook, smart watches, fitbits, Twitter, Spotify, etc. It's hard to explain to friends who ask why. It's basically a matter of mental bandwidth. It's not infinite. Every thing that demands a piece of my attention must take that attention away from something else. And I guess these things are not worth that cost to me. I don't judge people who think otherwise; that's just what works best for me personally.

pmiller2 9y ago
That's funny. I have neither a microwave, nor cable TV. I'm currently looking for a used microwave, but I have no desire whatsoever to get cable TV. My phone is currently 3 years old, and I don't really have a ton of gadgets beyond said phone and a laptop.
Ao7bei3s 9y ago
If you want to save mental bandwidth, I really recommend you reconsider not using Spotify. Spotify actually frees me from the "what music do I hear in the background" question, manually rearranging playlists, acquiring music and, worst of all, manually keeping my collection tagged. Before I had Spotify, I wasted evenings tagging everything with Picard... With Spotify, you just give it a starting point, start "song radio" and it'll keep playing and choosing next tracks. You can easily and very comfortably get through the day with only a play/pause hotkey and a next track hotkey. As a bonus, it just carries over between work, phone and home.

kristianc 9y ago

I can see this becoming a form of status-signalling in years to come (if it is not already?) Just as a sign of status for the CEO used to be the ability to disappear off to the golf course for a few hours, the new status might be the ability to be effectively inaccessible. The rest of us will have to put up with companies deliberately manipulating "habit forming" type behaviours to push their products. [1] [1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

EADGBE 9y ago
Or folks will be so in-tune with their connected ways that a service which "allows" you to disappear is more apparent than just throwing your phone off a bridge.

notananthem 9y ago

Book reviewer runs from technology. Surprise. Considering I have poor dental hygiene I upgraded to a base model electric toothbrush and have never been healthier. Terrible advice/article. I don't have a lot of fanciful gadgets but those I do have purpose.

sixdimensional 9y ago

Sometimes I wonder philosophically, how it is that electronics and digital systems - essentially, electrified/energized systems of some kind, have addictive and confounding properties to advancing societies and humans, similar to the way oil/petroleum/gas is to our way of life? Oil/petroleum/gas have huge societal and human benefits, and yet, so many negative side effects (climate change, pollution, war, etc.) and complications. "Energy" has these challenges, like many natural resources. sigh I can't quite find the right words.. The electrification / "energization" of things seems to add this tangible quality of also being confounding, complicating and somehow exhausting to us. It's like when you are walking out in nature somewhere remote, say, in a forest, where all you see are trees and rocks and rivers/streams, and breathe fresh air. There is something about this natural/analog state of being that can soothe us (although, nature can be quite alarming too). Books, analog toothbrushes, un-powered hand tools... things like this seem (in my opinion) to help humans feel... more human (and in control). There was a moment of this kind of feeling of awe of nature that was so amazing the other day when the eclipse happened in the US. A moment where it was like, everyone put down their phones, their lives, their problems and... just observed this phenomenon of beauty. It was simple and fleeting, but wonderful. I think the author is onto something here, but it's hard to say it in words. Is it an awakening of humanity within the digital age? A recognition of nature and humanity as something to balance with energy, digital, electronic? It definitely seems we are on this kind of a path. Lest we forget that, it would not be the first time that there have been "awakenings" and "enlightenment" in humanity's history. For example, in western cultures - [1] [2], and certainly others in other cultures. It seems there is something to be learned from history here. [1] The age of enlightment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment [2] The great awakening (religious context): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Great_Awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Great_Awakening

observation 9y ago
I think you would be interested in Biophilic Design. https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/ https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/
- 9y ago

didibus 9y ago

Or learn some self control and restraint.

pdimitar 9y ago
No idea why you're downvoted. There will always be a corporation out there that feeds on our primal instincts and trying to addict us to their products. That ain't ever going away. That's why teaching yourself restraint is hugely important these days. Guess many people haven't reached the mental state in which they recognize this truth.

quake 9y ago

There are some things in this article that I can definitely identify with, mainly the 'old laptop' that she was talking about, but an electric toothbrush??? That's hardly the notification-blasting brain-melter that she so despises. I'd certainly go back to a flip-phone if they had cameras like current smartphones.

chadash 9y ago

As a Sabbath observant Jew, I can relate to this article. I'm thankful for having one day a week without technology. It means that for 52 days a year, I get to not worry about checking my email; Spend time with friends and family in person, and have sit down meals where no one dares check their phone[1]. And it's great. But it really only works because of the communal aspects of it: Other members of my community are doing the same thing. Still, I recommend that everyone cut out some time during the year (maybe during a week of vacation) where they "cut the cord". You don't have to go all in. For example, maybe keep your cellphone with you, but disconnect your email account and don't send texts. 1[] We often have people over for Friday night dinners who aren't Sabbath observant. If someone pulls out their phone, I'll try to politely ask them to go to a different room if they want to use it or otherwise put it away.

pdimitar 9y ago
So using technology means not seeing your friends and family? Is being a member of a religious society the only way? I don't think so. I am quite successful in taming my tech in a very rigorous manner and I am indeed less stressed person for it.
- chadash 9y ago
  So using technology means not seeing your friends and family? Of course not. But a common problem I see is that people are glued to their phones/email, even when they are with family or friends. Before cellphones, there was the problem of people being glued to the TV instead of sitting down to meals with family. So yes, I think there are cases where technology impairs social relationships. Is being a member of a religious society the only way? No, it's not. It's just one way. Cutting access to my phone/texts/emails one a week is (in my mind) a positive side effect of my religious practices. But I think that anyone, religious or not, can benefit from being "off the grid" once in a while. For me, it certainly helps having a community of people living nearby who are also off-the-grid at the same time as me, since it means that everyone is available at the same time for in-person social interactions. Going off the grid isn't hard. Getting others to go off the grid at the same time as you often is.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pdimitar 9y ago

The article is too extreme. And gives bad examples (the electric toothbrush is proven to improve dental health of many people, me included). In general however, it's correct. But I don't go 100% this side or the other side. I find that to be irrational... hm, let me just be fully honest: I find that to be stupid. I crippled most of my smartphone apps' permissions and notification access and I am a happier person for it. Most apps want to "drive up engagement" so they spam you with whatever. I simply don't allow it. I use my smartphone to read books and articles I am really interested in, to collect digital art I enjoy, and do an occasional social network consumption -- but never above a certain time threshold (which is different for everyone). Also watch videos and lectures. It's a very positive experience after I fine-tuned it for myself, which everyone is supposed to do anyway, IMO. We shouldn't be extremists. Smartphones and most modern tech have very valid uses. But we have to resist the addictions. It's actually pretty easy.