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Smartphones are the first communication technology where the primary feature is that it's easier for the other end to ignore you. IMO: you practically lose not

by swiley 5y ago

Smartphones are the first communication technology where the primary feature is that it's easier for the other end to ignore you. IMO: you practically lose nothing by avoiding them.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
It's not clear if you talk about instant messaging or social networks - there is nothing in smartphones themselves that differentiates them from "dumb" phones as far as ignoring others is concerned.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  I think the main discerning function is that most smart phone communication mechanisms are asynchronous first. For traditional dumb phones, the only async feature was really voice-mail and message recorder systems which, from my experience, lead right back to synchronous communication ("call me back please"). With the advent of SMS, we slowly pushed more into the world of async and people learned how to find more and more socially acceptable ways to increase those time delays to the point of ignoring. For myself, almost all of my comms on my phone are async. Synchronous communication is now the exception instead of the norm. If you call me, unless you're my family or very close friends, you will go to voice mail and you will be screened.
jpindar 5y ago
If you ignore the message that says you're fired, you lose the cost of going to work and going home once they fire you in person, plus you might waste a day or two that you could have spent job-hunting.
denton-scratch 5y ago
I take it that you are referring to the async messaging capability of a smartphone. For me, the primary feature of a smartphone is that it is a telephone. I also have a smartphone app to control a 'smart' device. I can't type more than a word or two on a smartphone without making mistakes; maybe my fingers are too fat and blunt. If it's just about async messaging: 25 years before the first smartphones, we had email. You could send a message when the recipient was asleep, in the bath, or at the pool. If someone sent you a message, you could read it when that was convenient, in the knowledge that the sender wasn't expecting you to leap to your keyboard to reply instantly. You could even send the same message to many people at once. And there was best-efforts delivery, which meant that the system would keep trying to deliver, even if your mailserver was pretending to be deaf and dumb, for at least 4 days. And if the message you received was spam, or simply didn't call for a reply, then you simply didn't reply. And if you 'did' email on a proper mains-powered computer, then the battery never ran out. I hate smartphones. I only own one to run this particular app. I never take mine with me when I go out - it stays on my desk.

by swiley 5y ago

Smartphones are the first communication technology where the primary feature is that it's easier for the other end to ignore you. IMO: you practically lose nothing by avoiding them.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

It's not clear if you talk about instant messaging or social networks - there is nothing in smartphones themselves that differentiates them from "dumb" phones as far as ignoring others is concerned.

Frost1x 5y ago
I think the main discerning function is that most smart phone communication mechanisms are asynchronous first. For traditional dumb phones, the only async feature was really voice-mail and message recorder systems which, from my experience, lead right back to synchronous communication ("call me back please"). With the advent of SMS, we slowly pushed more into the world of async and people learned how to find more and more socially acceptable ways to increase those time delays to the point of ignoring. For myself, almost all of my comms on my phone are async. Synchronous communication is now the exception instead of the norm. If you call me, unless you're my family or very close friends, you will go to voice mail and you will be screened.

jpindar 5y ago

If you ignore the message that says you're fired, you lose the cost of going to work and going home once they fire you in person, plus you might waste a day or two that you could have spent job-hunting.

denton-scratch 5y ago

I take it that you are referring to the async messaging capability of a smartphone. For me, the primary feature of a smartphone is that it is a telephone. I also have a smartphone app to control a 'smart' device. I can't type more than a word or two on a smartphone without making mistakes; maybe my fingers are too fat and blunt. If it's just about async messaging: 25 years before the first smartphones, we had email. You could send a message when the recipient was asleep, in the bath, or at the pool. If someone sent you a message, you could read it when that was convenient, in the knowledge that the sender wasn't expecting you to leap to your keyboard to reply instantly. You could even send the same message to many people at once. And there was best-efforts delivery, which meant that the system would keep trying to deliver, even if your mailserver was pretending to be deaf and dumb, for at least 4 days. And if the message you received was spam, or simply didn't call for a reply, then you simply didn't reply. And if you 'did' email on a proper mains-powered computer, then the battery never ran out. I hate smartphones. I only own one to run this particular app. I never take mine with me when I go out - it stays on my desk.