3 ms·

I think I'd get 90% of the value from such a device, out of having a regular smartphone, but locked down to running only a single app, that works as follows: •

by derefr 5y ago

I think I'd get 90% of the value from such a device, out of having a regular smartphone, but locked down to running only a single app, that works as follows: • The app is an email client, so anyone with an email address can reach you through it, and you can send email through it; • but the email client is a proprietary one, associated with its own special email service provider (so you have a separate email address with them, and if you want to receive your regular email there, you have to set up forwarding); • and the email servers that this email service provider runs are special, in that they will deliver others' messages sent to your address, to your account's IMAP inbox, only after a 24hr delay; and they will forward the messages you send through the SMTP server, out to the next server in the SMTP chain, only after a 24hr delay. Given such an app+service, people could still reach me, but nobody could ever reach me synchronously. And I couldn't reach them synchronously, either. It'd be like the feeling of latency that comes from corresponding using physical letters, but with those letters happening to arrive wherever you are, rather than at a postbox. (I guess most similar to corresponding using letters when you're at a war front. A courier walks up to you and hands you a letter, sent from home 24hrs before.) Given the delay, there'd be no real point to messaging anyone more than once a day. I'd write an e-letter to each person, updating them on what's been going on with me, and then I'd turn my phone off. No point in wasting battery on it when any message is going to be at least 24hrs old when I receive it. May as well just check it in the evening, or the next day. If I see or hear something nice, I can take a picture / record a voice memo of it with the smartphone per usual, and include that picture in the letter I write that day. I could even vlog, I suppose. (Do you call it vlogging if it's done over email instead of over the web?) I could still subscribe to newsletters. And I could ask people to forward me clippings of interesting things they find on the web, as if it was 1996. But doomscrolling on social media? Impossible. Acting as a remote IT helpdesk oracle to diagnose some failure someone's having? Also impossible. If someone really needed a specific, single question answered, they could ask me, but only if they don't need the answer urgently. Better to just ask someone else, unless they don't have any better option. But having an "evergreen" conversation about an interesting topic would still work just fine. Heck, even participating in a Play By Email (PBEM) tabletop RPG — do people still run those? — would work fine.

hattmall 5y ago
You could set all that up pretty easily and just check your email once a day. If you lack the discipline you could set up servers to handle the 24 hour forwarding. An old smartphone or PDA with Wifi could work as well. You could potentially even setup some sort of Dial in if you wanted to really do it old school.
- derefr 5y ago
  Part of the point is that I also want to precommit to not just changing my email client's IMAP configuration back to my regular email server (so that, importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done.) So it would really need to be a special single-provider email client app, like Gmail's mobile app is. One that has no ability to talk to any other server than the 24hr-latency one. And at that point, with an app like that published in real app stores, the 24hr-latency server backing that app would become a real production capital-S Service with lots of users. One I'd rather someone other than me was running.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    > importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done. I mean, even if you go to great lengths to choose to subscribe to a particular email service that does this and choose to buy a phone that only does this, an employer could still demand you use a regular phone or regular email for correspondence or choose to not hire/work with you. I really can't imagine most people would be like "huh your phone only works in this one very peculiar way, I guess there's just nothing else that can be done about that." They'd just tell you to get a regular email. To other people there would be little difference between you choosing to use a service and device like this as you only using your email client once every 24 hours. Its ultimately the same thing: you're choosing to put yourself in a position where you can't be reached for 24 hours. Shifting the blame to some 3rd party isn't really effective when you theoretically can change back and sign up for a regular email account at any moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not demanding you live your life any particular way. Personally I don't care how you choose to live your life and I agree we could all use some time to detach from our always on always connected communicators. If you only want to be able to communicate by a 24 hour delay, go for it. Just don't expect everyone to suddenly be OK with it because you went out of your way to choose a service provider that facilitates that. I imagine you will encounter a good bit of friction doing it with the way society works right now.

by derefr 5y ago

hattmall 5y ago

You could set all that up pretty easily and just check your email once a day. If you lack the discipline you could set up servers to handle the 24 hour forwarding. An old smartphone or PDA with Wifi could work as well. You could potentially even setup some sort of Dial in if you wanted to really do it old school.

derefr 5y ago
Part of the point is that I also want to precommit to not just changing my email client's IMAP configuration back to my regular email server (so that, importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done.) So it would really need to be a special single-provider email client app, like Gmail's mobile app is. One that has no ability to talk to any other server than the 24hr-latency one. And at that point, with an app like that published in real app stores, the 24hr-latency server backing that app would become a real production capital-S Service with lots of users. One I'd rather someone other than me was running.
- vel0city 5y ago
  > importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done. I mean, even if you go to great lengths to choose to subscribe to a particular email service that does this and choose to buy a phone that only does this, an employer could still demand you use a regular phone or regular email for correspondence or choose to not hire/work with you. I really can't imagine most people would be like "huh your phone only works in this one very peculiar way, I guess there's just nothing else that can be done about that." They'd just tell you to get a regular email. To other people there would be little difference between you choosing to use a service and device like this as you only using your email client once every 24 hours. Its ultimately the same thing: you're choosing to put yourself in a position where you can't be reached for 24 hours. Shifting the blame to some 3rd party isn't really effective when you theoretically can change back and sign up for a regular email account at any moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not demanding you live your life any particular way. Personally I don't care how you choose to live your life and I agree we could all use some time to detach from our always on always connected communicators. If you only want to be able to communicate by a 24 hour delay, go for it. Just don't expect everyone to suddenly be OK with it because you went out of your way to choose a service provider that facilitates that. I imagine you will encounter a good bit of friction doing it with the way society works right now.