37 ms·

Life before smartphones (2020)

• Ajay-p 5y ago
  I have never truly known a period of time without a smart device. The last watch I had was when I was a small child and it was only a few years ago I found a street "atlas". I have a feeling that I've missed a building block of the digital age by not experiencing an evolutionary phase.
  • quartesixte 5y ago
    The pre-LTE era was quite the experience as a teenager, and it wasn’t until the iPhone 5 when smartphones became a ubiquitous and affordable thing (or justifiable) for many of my friends. I didn’t have a smartphone until my junior year of high school! SMS feature phones like the sidekick, with physical keyboards, ruled the day and many of my classmates actually disliked smartphones because of the lack of physical keys!
    • letitbeirie 5y ago
      > The pre-LTE era was quite the experience as a teenager You all had it made. I'm sure any younger person can vouch for the social issues that come along with every teenager having a smartphone, but your cohort also missed out on family-shared landlines and all of the issues attendant with them. Calling your date and finding yourself forced to make small talk with her dad the phone bouncer, for example.
  • tboyd47 5y ago
    You can always go back, any time! Get a dumb phone. It's great. Engage with others more authentically, more meaningfully, and more consistently.
    • varrock 5y ago
      This is great from a social aspect, but society favors having a smart phone to get things done. The cons might outweigh the pros from my perspective.
    • whynotminot 5y ago
      You can go back, but you’re going back alone.
      • tboyd47 5y ago
        Who's alone? I've got people around me all the time who understand and support my decision. It may be hard for some people, but if you really want to do it, keep at it and don't give up. Seven generations from now, do you think smartphones will still have this hold on humanity? We just can't continue this way; it's an unsustainable form of society. Even movies made in 2021 do not depict smartphone usage anywhere close to the frequency and intensity they are used now. People will wake up from this collective dream one day; I'd rather wake up now and get started early on building something that works, wouldn't you?
      • sdevonoes 5y ago
        Nothing wrong about that :)
      • JKCalhoun 5y ago
        I for one will go with them. :-)
    • ahofmann 5y ago
      Tried it, hated it. Everyone is using WhatsApp, Telegram, whatever. Try typing a sms with those tiny buttons, it sucks. There is a reason why some people have a smartphone but not a computer.
      • jacquesm 5y ago
        I find that the quality of the communications increases with the resistance to communicate.
      • 3grdlurker 5y ago
        That last sentence is the most confusing thing I’ve read today, and I still don’t know what you mean by it.
        • KineticLensman 5y ago
          >> There is a reason why some people have a smartphone but not a computer. > That last sentence is the most confusing thing I’ve read today, and I still don’t know what you mean by it. I think ahofmann is referring to people who have a smartphone but not a desktop / laptop or similar.
        • floren 5y ago
          I think they mean you can mostly get along without a computer if you have a smartphone, but not vice versa, because the modern world assumes you've got a smartphone in your pocket at all times.
      • tboyd47 5y ago
        SMS is a drag, but all the apps you mentioned have desktop versions.
      • JKCalhoun 5y ago
        Pretty sure the person you are responding to was not suggesting continuing to use WhatsApp, Telegram, whatever. Getting off those was kind of the point.
    • jbay808 5y ago
      Unfortunately you can't; society has changed too, in many ways. Even some government services now require either an iOS or Android device to access (like vaccination records here in BC). A dumb phone does less for you now than it did in 2005, just like a horse does less for you now than it did in 1895. Even if you really like horses, you can't ride them on the same streets you once could.
      • letitbeirie 5y ago
        Great example: in 2005 you could text 466-45 (Google) for weather and directions, but that service got canned by 2012 or so.
    • lubujackson 5y ago
      You can't go back though, not really. Like if you got lost pre-smartphones you would find a gas station and the person there would rattle off a series of turns you had to memorize on the spot or would pull out an atlas and walk you through directions - this was normal. Now, they would look at you like an alien. There was a culture of nudging people along to the right place. Even as a kid you would be asked for directions from time to time and have to sort out how many blocks to go before the next turn and all that, often without ever having seen an actual map of your own town.
      • tboyd47 5y ago
        Yes, you can. I did. I do fine. I'm happy with my choice :)
      • heavyset_go 5y ago
        As a side effect of being a big city, I'm constantly asked for directions that could easily be found by opening a smartphone. Hell, I do it myself sometimes, especially about things like bus or subway lines I'm not familiar with.
    • spywaregorilla 5y ago
      I have a friend who did that. It's pretty irritating trying to remember his unique constraints on communication that I need to know in order to reach him. Some people conflate authenticity for interactions with others who are willing to go way out of their way to spend time with you.
  • 4gotunameagain 5y ago
    Aligning the infrared ports of two phones until max speed was achieved and being extremely careful to not move them for minutes which felt like ages to just send over a polyphonic ringtone.. And if the bell rung, well, you were out of luck
• WillEngler 5y ago
  Contrary to the author's claim, the photo booth at Rainbo Club is still there.
  • pbrb 5y ago
    Shocked me to see Rainbo referenced. The photo booth is still there.
• laurieg 5y ago
  A couple of stand-out memories from the olden days (and I don't consider myself particularly old): Getting a call in a restaurant. Only happened to me once but I certainly felt like a VIP. Carrying a tiny map book of London around with me while cycling around. Missing turn after turn until finding there was a canal which basically took me from the center to my uncle's house. Arranging to meet a friend and then being late. Really late. 1 hour late. He was still there, waiting for me.
  • xwolfi 5y ago
    Yeah I remember waiting for people - I got a smartphone at 16, in 2004, something like that, so it's hard to really imagine how it was for adults... My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D But I think it's better anyway - we sample mating candidates more, we cycle through faster, we can stop and try anew nearly any time until 50, and with some difficulty above. I mean my aunt had a crushing divorce when she had 3 young children and stayed alone working with all 3 until the internet arrived and she could find a partner much faster...
    • noisy_boy 5y ago
      > My parents told me they spend evenings at the phone booth talking to each other - but even that is ultra convenient compared to my grandparents sending letters :D No need to get to the grandparents' generation, I was the letter writer of my family :) I wrote letters to uncles/aunts/grandpa - mostly at the command of my mum or grandma and sometimes for myself. I remember rushing to the window when the postman yelled and dropped letters through the grill - sometimes there would be more than one! The excitement was palpable - now we sigh with annoyance at the barrage of nonsense and spam that flows into our inbox. Truly a case of quantity over quality.
      • tomjen3 5y ago
        I remember feeling that way when I got an email back in the day, because it was a pretty rare event. These days, I feel like that when I get a physical letter that isn't sent by a machine.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  The thing that rings out for me in this essay: "Once plans were made, I showed up without any further contact to check whether we were, in fact, “still on for tonight,”" I miss that. Used to be that if you made plans to meet someone, they would come to that time and place. Amazing! And the difference is not even limited to your friends and dating. Now we can't even count on regularly scheduled activities to happen as planned. Public schools cancel classes with a voicemail and less than an hour's notice, under the assumption that everyone will get the message.
  • r00fus 5y ago
    (Pre cellphones, early 90s era) My problem with that is that my friend group were not exactly punctual (myself included). So that meant a lot of waiting around, and in some cases, your group may not show up. Being near a pay-phone or begging a phone call from an establishment helped some. Also - you remembered your friends phone numbers (or had a black book).
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      Obviously! I still remember my high school friends' phone numbers and I haven't needed to dial any of them in thirty years.
    • ASalazarMX 5y ago
      Man, using a pay phone with a card instead of coins felt like the future, ha ha. Also, if you went out without telling your family where, you became unreachable for the whole day(s). Going dark that way nowadays is almost unthinkable.
    • mc32 5y ago
      Someone usually had a beeper to help coordinate things with the stragglers.
      • r00fus 5y ago
        None of my friends had beepers. LOL I assumed all folks with beepers were dealers.
• kernoble 5y ago
  The unmentioned thing here is why? Why does the world with a smartphone and today's hyper-connectivity seem so different now compared to what it used to? Did people feel the same way when the railroad and other forms of rapid transport showed up? What makes things feel so different? Is it more competition, and for what? Is it that things are just faster, and the certainties have changed? Has it fundamentally changed how we experience relationships with people? Are our standards now higher, and is that a good thing?
  • mojuba 5y ago
    Something I've been wondering about lately: In the pre-Internet era, rumors, incidents, conspiracies, book and movie opinions were passed on verbally. I saw an article nobody else in my circle ever read; a friend watched a movie nobody else is going to see any time soon, etc. There were endless opportunities to get together and talk. We were each other's Internets. Do people talk less these days? I certainly do but that might be due to my age. But I'm genuinely curious if the topics of conversations are as intellectually fulfilling as they used to be.
    • kernoble 5y ago
      People talk online. Whether that's equivalent is up for debate. There might be an argument that our new online/text based discussions have changed the dynamics (some could argue hindered, but I don't) of face to face communication.
  • Damogran6 5y ago
    I still occasionally marvel that I can wake up at 4:30am in Denver and be in Very Rural Virginia by 5pm...and that's with stopping over in Atlanta first. It's not the travel, or the time, it's the 'it's more efficient to go thousands of miles out of the way due to logistics.' This has not been particularly new, but I can still marvel at it. Having fixed plumbing, I'm reminded that the current iteration is as a result of 2000 years of refinement. I have a lathe, manufactured in 1966, it still holds tolerances, and I refer to a book (how to run a lathe) that's first printing was at the turn of the 20th century (1912 or thereabouts) Old stuff is remarkable, too.
• tester756 5y ago
  kinda awkward, but I don't use one, ama I guess? > I didn’t think about wage gaps, I think that this and other similar examples are confusing the Internet and smartphone
• m0ngr31 5y ago
  I've been working my way through Seinfeld, and I realized most of the plot lines couldn't have happened if cell phones were commonplace back then.
  • mateo411 5y ago
    There's a modern Seinfeld twitter account, which has a bunch of zany plot lines that are only possible in the smart phone era.
    • austinl 5y ago
      Wanted to share the link just because I love this account as well: https://twitter.com/SeinfeldToday https://twitter.com/SeinfeldToday A recent example: George's GF wants a "no phones at dinner" rule. G: "We had a good thing going, Jerry! Now we're supposed to talk? That can only end badly!
      • CPLX 5y ago
        This one is still current, and hilarious: https://mobile.twitter.com/seinfeld2000 https://mobile.twitter.com/seinfeld2000
    • selimthegrim 5y ago
      Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t modern Seinfeld?
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    You know, that's another thing that has changed a lot. Modern TV writer just can't stop himself from using the mobile phone as a device to advance the story. We have to watch some guy in a TV show sending iMessages. That is so boring, and as a caveman from the pre-cellular era it takes me out of the show and makes me want to turn it off. A recent offender in this regard was the Amazon show "Bosch". If you made a supercut of the titular detective answering his iPhone, it would be almost as long as the series itself. This is particularly irritating since the Bosch novels were written in the 90s, before the smartphone era, in the car-phone era at the latest.
• KineticLensman 5y ago
  A couple of things not mentioned: * Half of the population watching the same episodes of the same programme simultaneously. If you missed an episode, it was gone forever * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ASalazarMX 5y ago
    > * Inane arguments in pubs about facts that couldn't be instantly googled. I don't miss those. Before the Internet, if it wasn't on an encyclopedia and you weren't at the library, you had no way of corroborating information. On the other hand, since facts are so accessible right now, those arguments have shifted to voicing their feelings and wishes because those can't be falsified.
    • OJFord 5y ago
      Perhaps 'inane arguments in pubs' isn't the best framing, but I do find the ability to ~instantly search for an answer online kills a lot of discussion. I find it quite irritating sometimes - can we not just talk about it! - and it's not like I have a long memory before it was possible. (I grew up with phones certainly, was in school when they became 'smart'.)
    • jsight 5y ago
      You aren't kidding, I'm also seeing a trend of people claiming that any information that doesn't match their viewpoint must be faked or dishonest.
      • johncessna 5y ago
        The issue isn't that people are just huffing, crossing their arms, and crying fake news. The issue is that they are able to bring up 100 different sites supporting their claims. The person they are arguing with, obviously knows that the other is an idiot because they have 100 different sites supporting their claims! In a way, we've regressed back before we had the answer machine at our fingertips. You don't really know who's correct. It's just changed from 'Well, I heard xyz from my friend's aunt's sister, so I'm right. Oh yeah! Gary just said the opposite yesterday, so you're wrong' to something a little bit different.
• paulvs 5y ago
  This is eerily similar to videos forwarded on WhatsApp about "things you'd only understand if you were born in the <insert decade here>" :) I did relate to it though. It would be apt for a video about things you'd only understand if you're a millennial.
  • Damogran6 5y ago
    I could see it being a pretty nifty series on the History Channel. "If you were 120 years old, this is what you'd remember from when you were 20"
• gopalv 5y ago
  > Were those the good old days? I've heard this from several generations that the time when you were still under the protection of parents, but not their attention are the "good old days" of your life - like if your biggest worry if you flipped a car was "My dad will kill me!" and not "phew, not a scratch on me & my friends are all alive". Must be the youth and opportunity of that phase of life rather than the actual era in the world (just look at a "2007 was the best year in video games" for an equivalent for a late millenial). The music was better, the cereal crunched better, all your friends lived nearby & were always free to hang out, the TV shows were made for your eyes and talking about your dreams was the thing you did without any irony. Also there was a lot that affected you that you just didn't know yet. You weren't even aware of your ignorance & all knowledge was just within reach. > I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters. > Things weren’t fluid and there was no spectrum. I assumed the police were telling the truth. I was unaware of how frequently powerful men answered the door wearing nothing but a towel. Oh, there was definitely a spectrum (Rain Man came out in the 80s). Rodney King was before the iPhone. LBJ was already showing people how everything in Texas was bigger (Doris Kearns Goodwin has a laugh about it, but we'll never know if she cringed). I'm too young to remember all this, because it was before my time, but I sort of went into the part 2 of "We didn't start the fire" here.
  • pram 5y ago
    It's practically nonsensical. I had a "dumbphone" up until 2011. I'm not even a luddite, I just did everything on my computer (and still pretty much do) because the general early phone OS experience was vastly inferior. 'Life before smartphones' was thus almost essentially the same going back to like 1996. I still spent all day on the internet, except now I can read it while I take a dump I guess.
  • planet-and-halo 5y ago
    Yeah, doesn't it seem natural that being around a persistent social group and spending the majority of the day hanging out made us happy? Seems like pretty much what we evolved for.
• legrande 5y ago
  You can still live like what's described in this article. Get yourself a dumbphone and a paper atlas, only pay with cash, avoid loyalty cards, read paper books, newspapers, etc Now and then I do that, just to switch off from our hyper-connected world. Switching off is the new peace of mind.
  • don-code 5y ago
    Much like living outside the Matrix, would you really want to go back, knowing what you know? Yes, you can use a paper atlas. I have an 8-year-old car with GPS, and a 34-year-old car without. I bought a map book for the 34-year-old car, thinking it'd be a "period accurate" way of driving it; it's anachronistic at best, and frustrating at worst - can you read the street signs, and did you drop your compass under the seat? In the 8-year-old car, I can hit a button, say "Navigate to (an address)" _while driving_, and it figures it out. Some of these I do on principle (only pay with cash, avoid loyalty cards, etc.), and I accept a compromised UX as a result. Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you get out of these things, but the immediate impact of them seem generally negative.
    • com2kid 5y ago
      > and did you drop your compass under the seat? You can get battery powered compasses that you stick on your dash. :) My car's review mirror has a compass in it and I use it for navigation quite often. Places I had to drive to before GPS are places I have a better understanding of how to get to. I have a friend who refuses to use GPS and his knowledge of the city is far far ahead of mine. Of course I am lucky to live in a place built on a true x-y coordinate grid system where given any address you can navigate to it w/o issue using, well, just a compass. :) I wouldn't try that trick in London! :) (There is a cool documentary about London cab drivers and what they have/had to go through to memorize the entire city)
      • cwyptocuwency 5y ago
        Is it not "rear view" mirror, not "review" mirror? Or is that some regional term?
• stonekyx 5y ago
  Very nicely written. Made me feel nostalgic of the faint memories when I was a kid. Not really the main theme of this article, but I guess I do lack the courage of approaching a woman for her number and asking her out these days. Can't imagine how hard that is in real life.
• bambam24 5y ago
  I remember I waited a friend 8hours on a bench, because I told him so, I will wait there. Didn’t move at all, I sit and stair at bosporus.
• krylon 5y ago
  Now I feel old. I remember vividly running around with my first camera, looking for objects worthy of being photographed. The film cost money, so did developing it into pictures. I really had to weigh the pros and cons of taking a particular picture. And in a class of ~25 kids, I was one of three who owned a camera. Not that it was such a luxury item, but most people weren't into that. These days, (nearly) everyone carries a camera around all the time, and one that is quite probably much better than the one I had in 1992. They can take dozens, even hundreds of pictures without breaking a sweat, and it does not cost anything. Nostalgia is a very warped mirror. Back then, I did not miss the ability to take dozens of pictures at no cost, because the option did not exist. Was it better? Worse? Neither, I think. But this is the first time I feel old and appreciate it for the history I have lived through. Getting old is weird, but it sure is interesting. (For reference, I'm 40. "That's not old", I hear someone say, but I have never been this old before, so for me it's all new.)
  • progman32 5y ago
    I remember back when I got my first digital camera, people would routinely ask me "ok but how do you look at the pictures? Do you just print them out?". Looking at them on a screen was almost unfathomable. Nowadays, a physical album seems to have taken the place of your camera in the 90s. Not quite a luxury item, but you'd have to be "into that" to go to the trouble of making a physical album.
    • beamatronic 5y ago
      The difference is that we spend all of our waking hours in front of screens of differing sizes
      • paulryanrogers 5y ago
        Not all of us. I too grew up when screen time meant a few hours of TV a week, tops. And having a connection to another world of opinions or clubs or virtual activities is better than the past without them. My kids have limited screen time, not unlike my parents pushing me outside to play. Until they have mature impulse control and a variety of experience I'll continue to guide them. But without all the judgemental 'lessons' and talking down to that I experienced.
• galfarragem 5y ago
  Maybe is just me but I read this as a satire of modern days and not as a satire of the old days. Most things the author hints as awkward in the past, the “optimized” version sounds frivolous. I’m not a zealot of old times but if we are honest with ourselves we realize that most new stuff is crap. 90% somebody said. Few changes are net improvements.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure, on the whole, it was a satire of modern days. But I appreciate the balance of the author, reminding us that there were shortcomings: always trusting police comes to mind.
• derefr 5y ago
  > I was not archived, nor was I searchable; things I said just disappeared forever. > I had no influence and never disrupted anything. Strangers did not wish me a happy birthday or “Like” me. My personal brand was invisible. > I did not take photos of myself, was not filtered These things have always been happening; society just previously only had enough resources to set its scorching eye on politicians, nobles, and celebrities, in such a way as to force these thoughts and behaviors as reaction. Now there's enough attention for everybody, whether they like it or not. > There was no surveillance of the streets. Sure there was. It was just the unreliable and biased eye-witness kind of surveillance. One of the main purpose of the "city guard" was patrolling and noting down suspicious behavior. Pre-globalization, many large cities would by default have border walls and border checks, where you'd have to state your purpose of visit and get your entry/exit recorded in a logbook. Also, there were a lot of curfews. Curfew laws used to be pretty common, enabling city guards to treat anyone who is out at night as a de-facto criminal, enabling immediate search-and-seizure. > News was not breaking Sure it was. There was less space to fill, and so "breaking news" was limited to things of wider relevance, but it still happened, and still spread quickly. Even pre radio, there was "breaking news" in newspapers, pushed into the edition at the last minute. The whole value-prop of the telegraph was to spread "breaking news." > The only content users generated was letters to the editor. Depending on the era, you're forgetting about: • Usenet • Public-access television • Call-in radio shows • Open-participation scientific journals and "societies of letters" Also, people could just sit down and write a book. Or, more likely, a memoir. The interesting ones would eventually get discovered and published, if perhaps post-humously. > I rarely got to feel outraged by the words of people I’d never met. They were there, in books/memoirs. People who read a lot of this generally made a career (in Literary Criticism) out of it. > The only bingeing I did involved alcohol. I’d wait an entire week to watch the next episode. You could have been binging serial novels! > acquaintances never asked me to finance their ... back surgery Sure they did; they likely did it through by presenting their problem to the local church, who then asked you to donate on their behalf. They're still doing that, in fact. GoFundMe is communal charity for non-religious people. > I didn’t think about wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering, or the intricacies of romantic encounters. People have been talking about all of these things (perhaps under different names) for centuries. They're hard to avoid, in fact, if you read the writings of "statesmen" of previous eras. > My desk’s height did not adjust; I just sat in a chair and took it. You could have just had one short desk and one tall one. Or a writing desk. Most people didn't, though. The real modern difference is a self-interested motivation to have good ergonomics. > butts that were incapable of functioning as shelves. Such butts certainly existed; they were just not evenly distributed. :)
• lordnacho 5y ago
  IMO the big thing is not being bored. Someone is late for a meeting? Doesn't matter, you've got HN to read. On the back seat for a long drive? Doesn't matter, you can answer emails. Or play a game. The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have vanished. I'm not sure what people prefer more though. Say you're waiting for a date, do you feel best breaking off directly from your reading of the dragon book, or would you feel best just doing nothing until they showed up?
  • klyrs 5y ago
    > The whole psychologically weird phase of "hmm I'm here and waiting, and all I can do is watch paint dry" seems to have vanished. I dunno. Infinite scrolling sure feels like watching paint dry to me... but as a teenager my idea of a good time was finding an isolated bit of woods, and sitting still enough for the fauna to ignore me. Actually, that's still my idea of a good time, but I'm too busy and the woods anywhere nearby are too crowded.
  • mrweasel 5y ago
    After getting vaccinated I was sitting in the waiting area, for the 15 minutes our suppose to stay, in case you get an allergic reaction and I noticed that most people where NOT looking at their phones. They where just sitting, doing nothing. I did the same, and honestly, it was absolutely wonderful just to have 15 minutes where you did nothing. I'm not saying I wouldn't get bored just waiting for extended periods of time, but sometimes it's nice to know that for the next 10 - 20 minutes, you just have to exist in this spot, and that's all that's really expected of you.
    • jwond 5y ago
      When I go to the gym I don't bring my phone with me, and when I am resting in-between sets I just sit there. Sometimes my mind will wander, but often I just sit there and my mind is pretty much blank. I find it very relaxing.
      • maerF0x0 5y ago
• didip 5y ago
  Smartphones have truly improved my life beyond comparison. I still remembered the bad old days when I was young: * Too worried to take a picture because I might ran out of film. * Too worried about screwing up the flash light because I didn't have enough film. * Recording important things (like my class) was too big of a hassle and too expensive (Not enough tapes). * SMS was a cost that I always had to worry. * Books are much lighter now because they are now digital. * Podcast was such a hassle before because of carrying around tapes. * Laptop was a thing but nowhere as convenient as a smartphone to look up a reference.
• ladyattis 5y ago
  >I assumed the police were telling the truth. I gotta laugh at this. Being someone that's from a working town and being from a working class family, cops weren't to be trusted. Cops lied even back then. Life wasn't better back then. The fact he seems to mock gender fluidity and polyamory really shows how much has changed for the better. People who didn't fit in with the gender constructs then were out of luck. Either you were forced to be lgb or if you were trans you had to fit the gendered mold; no androgyny unless you're doing it as part of a musical act.
  • chadlavi 5y ago
    See also "being elite was good" and "I wasn't polyamorous." It's a whole article of "I only knew how to be a vanilla white guy. And that was a good thing!"
    • asoneth 5y ago
      > And that was a good thing!" Interesting, I came away with the impression that the author was implying that some of these changes (i.e. better understanding of toxicity, therapy, wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering) to be positive changes to provide more nuance in their post than just a list of raw nostalgia.
    • jasonlotito 5y ago
      > And that was a good thing! The article literally questions that conclusion. "Were those the good old days? It’s tough to say." It's as if there were advantages and disadvantages. It's easy to view the past as "good" but the reality, as presented in this article, was really a mixed bag.
  • d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    Why is polyamory good?
    • lopis 5y ago
      Because if multiple consenting adults love each other and want to form amorous relationships between then, that should be ok and accepted since it hurts nobody?
• chadlavi 5y ago
  The part about cosmetic surgery seems gratuitous and unnecessary/off topic.
  • websites2023 5y ago
    I think that was meant to call out the highly modified people that are shown on Instagram. I don't use Instagram, so that comment stuck out to me as well, but I see where the author is coming from.
• tboyd47 5y ago
  Things I enjoy about my life now, after having ditched my smartphone: * Being fully into a stimulating conversation with friends for an hour or more, without constant interruptions for people to check their phones and then change the subject to something irrelevant and mildly infuriating. * Being able to go for random/spontaneous drives with my family in the car and negotiate where we're going next without having to pull over to update Google Maps or hear the phone bark "Make a U-Turn" a zillion times until I do. * Looking forward to social interactions being events where I enjoy doing things I like with people whose company I value, instead of a constant stream of bullshit, dueling ego trips, and disconnected conversations where both parties spend more time correcting the other person about what they meant than actually saying something. * Waking up in the morning earlier than planned, full of energy, then sipping my coffee slowly as the sun rises, because I got good, restful sleep last night. * Not having to face surprise criticism about something I said X days ago, because most of my statements are verbal, only reach the people they were intended to reach, and are not preserved after that. * Not having to spend more time taking pictures of an activity than actually doing the activity. * Not being in a constant state of annoyance all the time due to a distinct lack of time spent correcting typos, fat-fingering menus, waiting on things to load, and dismissing popups. * Tasting true solitude (not just alone time) once in a while. I could go on and on.
  • jasonlotito 5y ago
    That sort of ignores the rest of the article outside the headline though.
  • kwinten 5y ago
    You can literally still do all of these things with a smartphone. I guess the wisdom here is to know yourself and your limits and whether you have an addictive personality.
• JanMa 5y ago
  About 2.5 years ago I struggled a bit with smartphone addiction. All the screen time limitation apps didn't work out for me and I decided the smartphone had to go. Instead I bought the then newly released Nokia 8110 4G, which is a so-called featurephone. This phone really worked out well for me. It had great battery life of up to a week, WiFi, 4G and supported Whatsapp. You could take an occasional snapshot with it's 2MP camera and if you really wanted to, browse the internet on a tiny 2.45" screen. Also you could connect it with you Google account to sync contacts and email. With these features it allowed me to do the beneficial things you use an internet connected phone for, like staying in touch with my peers and looking for directions. But I was no longer able to mindlessly scroll the internet for hours each day because it was just not possible. So if you're also not happy with your smartphone usage, I can really recommend you to give a featurephone a try. At ~60€ it is cheap enough to try it for 2 weeks and put it in some drawer if it doesn't work out. Disclaimer: 1,5 years later I started using a smartphone again because I had a kid and wanted to be able to take better pictures. [0]: https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-8110-4g/specs https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_int/nokia-8110-4g/specs
• krupan 5y ago
  I grew up in Washington and I remember biting into a red delicious apple was like biting into a water balloon they were so juicy. They were always super crisp and crunchy too, big chunks would break off as you bit them. Now when I get them (I don’t live in WA anymore) they are always mushy and gross. Is this what we are talking about?
  • abxytg 5y ago
    IIRC some huge percentage of apples are produced in WA. The ones I get in SW WA from Yakima are still like that.
• random_walker 5y ago
  There will _always_ be good old days.
• ksec 5y ago
  Not really to do with Smartphone, but before the Smartphone era, having a phone call is pretty damn nice. Now it is all robocalls. I dont even remember the last time I had a real person calling me. The people I know, or even those I dont such as job agents, will leave a whatsapp message. I also used to think having a decent digital Camera on a phone would be insanely great. It turns out not so, at least not any more. Every single god damn digital photo are now either some stupid "computational" photography enhanced, some are enhanced with AI or whatever Machine Learning. Apple used to be on the realistic camp but now even they are joining the profile of instagram generation. ( I have been told customer want these sort of features as they think it is better photo, and sell better ) And if that is not enough most of them are posted with some editing or filters. To the point nothing in the photo I saw is real. I remember dreaming about online MMO on a phone. That was UO / World of Warcraft era. May be in ten to fifteen years time a Pocket Computer with Wireless Network. That would be so much fun. But gaming now has becomes a casino with lots of gambling options to win the game. It is also time sink for many of us to escape into the "metaverse". ( Metaverse is the new VC hype of 2021 ). They are no longer the same. I remember I really really wanted IRC, ICQ and later MSN on a Smartphone. It didn't work. I have to hack an O2 Atom ( made by HTC before they become a brand of itself they used to be a ODM like Foxconn ) and it was a battery drain. Now it is largely replaced by all sort of instant messenger. But we dont give ICQ numbers or your MSN handle to anyone anymore. It is all "phone" numbers. So it is more of a "real world" connection rather than some "Internet identity" we used to have. Speaking of O2 Atom, I have been looking for a smartphone, or a pocket computer that uses 2G GPRS as Data Connection and slowly browse the Internet on the street. So I could sit in a Cafe and use some remote server that will send me the .MHT version of a website so I only use one connection. ( Multiple connection on GPRS are bound to fail ). iPhone was everything I wanted I remember vividly how Apple nailed it. From capacitive Touch Screen to all the small UX. Most people didn't get it. As it wasn't the first "Smartphone", you have Nokia Symbian and something like the Sony Ericsson P900 at the time. Most people were like Steve Ballmer and laughing at it. But for those who were looking for it for so long. iPhone was "it". I would have thought with Smartphone, people would listen to even more music, as it replaces mp3, or MiniDisc. Where we curate our own collection very carefully to try and fit in how tiny amount of storage we had. Turns out people are consuming more Video and other forms of Media. Music isn't "dead", but it certainly didn't bloom like many expected. From a high level prospective, all forms of media are competing for your attention and time.
• narrator 5y ago
  I didn't see it mentioned, so I'll add it for completeness. One of the differences between pre-smartphone and the post-smartphone world is the pervasive and unlimited availability of adult content. Pornography used to be really hard to get. Now it is unlimited and free. There are now more than 1 million content creators on OnlyFans. The democratization, if you want to call it that, of adult content to me seems to me like something out of gonzo sci-fi Music is also now almost free and unlimited. Local music died in the early 90s when the telecommunications act was passed and all the local stations got bought and consolidated into national syndicates. Local DJs didn't find bands anymore. There was a real rough spot when the mainstream was dull and it was very hard to find out about alternative music. Later, the internet and Youtube leveled the playing field between the mainstream and everything else and things got better.
  • fleddr 5y ago
    I'd say pre-internet, not pre-smartphone. Wide availability of free porn has been there since the start of the internet. It precedes smartphones by more than a decade. Or so I've been told.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• vimacs2 5y ago
  I kind of love how this article neither glorifies nor bemoans how things used to be but instead just gives a detailed and artful description.
• pugets 5y ago
  What I miss more than anything else is having an attention span. Years of abusing social media has left my brain pinballing all over the place. I am a collection of unfinished thoughts. Even as I write this, I can feel my mind needing to latch onto something new.
  • zz865 5y ago
    Me too, congrats on completing that second sentence. :)
  • robohoe 5y ago
    This one is a tough one and I can relate. I haven't been able to finish a book or work on any labs or FOSS work in years now. I reach for the phone even when I get a moment of downtime. The addiction is strong and now I as learn to be more mindful I realize how common place it is for everyone.
  • collinvandyck76 5y ago
    I recently quit all social media. There was a bit of withdrawal but I can confirm that my attention span has started coming back.
    • Otek 5y ago
      It’s easy to quit, but how did you manage to fill empty time that you’ve suddenly gotten?
      • collinvandyck76 5y ago
        I'm learning how to play the banjo.
      • tmjwid 5y ago
        For me, the idea of needing to fill the time is one of the symptoms of the problem. Empty time is perfectly fine.
    • collaborative 5y ago
• maerF0x0 5y ago
  > had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars, Returning to these kinds of adhoc social interactions has be instrumental in helping breaking my isolation and depression. Friendly chit chat with a barista, say hello to anyone who isn't obviously avoidant, asking to pet their dog etc. Not wearing headphones has also been an important thing because it means I'm instantly available for interaction if someone should say something, or if I want to.
  • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    Curiously, almost everybody on the hiking trail I bike has the telltale white lozenges in their ears now. Pre-Covid it was something like 25%. So trail talk has been reduced to nearly zero. I call out "On your left!" as I pass, but still folks can be startled as I drift past. And forget saying "Good morning!" and getting a response. It will take years to undo the changes done by this past year.
    • tqi 5y ago
      Strangers don't owe you a response, and not being expected to give one is not a regression.
      • JoeAltmaier 5y ago
        Don't know where you live, but a year ago they did respond. Now they don't. That's a change, and it seems clearly to be in the 'not as social as before' category. I take that remark as part of the regression itself - "I'm not as social as before and that's ok because reasons!" It's sad.
• figers 5y ago
  Early college, pre-phones (only calling cards), Flight into Europe, told my cousin what time it was landing, to meet me at the airport station at such and such a time. I landed, walked to the train platform, waited on the bench, read a travel book while I waited. He showed up and we were on our way around Europe by train for two weeks. Looking back how did we pull that off pre-cellphones. Had my flight been delayed on the runway for hours or we just missed each other on wrong train platforms I had no way to get in touch, he wasn’t staying in the last hotel any longer…
• exaltation 5y ago
  This article was featured on Thinking About Things [0] today, which is likely how it got to the front page of Hacker News. http://thinking-about-things.com/ http://thinking-about-things.com/
• jokoon 5y ago
  I bought a smartphone something like 2 years ago and only started paying for wireless data 1 year ago, because I was tired of being stubborn about it, I really felt I was excluded from many things. I have to admit I often go on reddit when I have some time, but I don't go on instagram or facebook. Sharing videos on whatsapp when you're in rural areas is crazy, and to me it's really pointless, even though I like technologies. It's hard to say if people are less social because of smartphones, since social networks are not so social after all. Although I'm really curious if avoiding digital social networks would result in an amputated real social life. Online dating really really allowed me to get out more, and I don't feel like there is a good enough equivalent for friendships and activities.
  • psychomugs 5y ago
    I've owned a smartphone since late high school (~2010) but didn't get a data plan until some five or six years later. I actually miss having to be more intentional about where and when and what I was doing; data feels like an invisible umbilical cable that I can't cut off.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rubymatt 5y ago
  Hey, I'm Matt Ruby (author of this essay). If you dig it, please consider signing up for my newsletter where I published it. You'll get my jokes, videos, & essays in your inbox weekly: https://mattruby.substack.com/ https://mattruby.substack.com/ Also, I've got a new standup special/album that you can watch on YouTube or stream as an album: https://800PGR.lnk.to/RubyTW https://800PGR.lnk.to/RubyTW And you can watch a video version of this essay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30ja0d3qXv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30ja0d3qXv4 Thanks for reading! Hit me up at mattruby@hey.com with any questions/feedback.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• asimpletune 5y ago
  This brought back a memory of a point in time where my family had a cellphone for everyone to share. If you were going to go out then it was your responsibility to take the family cellphone with you.
• paxys 5y ago
  The second paragraph is funny to me: > I memorized phone numbers, jotted things down in notebooks, had conversations with taxi drivers, talked to random people at bars, wrote checks, went to the bank, and daydreamed. I did all of these (except the phone number one) in the last week. More than technological advancements or anything else, all of this nostalgia is really just about getting old. "The human civilization peaked when I turned 12 and started declining when I crossed 25. I pity today's youth." – every generation ever.
  • freshdonut 5y ago
    Have you been to a college campus in the last two or three years? There is a serious smartphone addiction problem. It is seriously worrying to see so many of my peers craning their necks, starting at their phone for hours on end. On the bus, in class, while hanging out, it is an observable fact that everyone is almost always on their phone. I personally believe we are in a watershed moment for human civilization. The harms of this smartphone addicted world will snowball down into later generations who have never known a life without every need catered for and every boring moment seized by entertainment.
    • paxys 5y ago
      Is any of this backed by real facts or just your "kids these days" observations? Today's youth is better suited for dealing with smartphones and the overall connected world than we could ever be. All the people I know with real technological addiction problems (whether to smartphones, social media, scams, online radicalization or anything else) are like 45+.
      • freshdonut 5y ago
        > All the people I know with real technological addiction > problems (whether to smartphones, social media, scams, online radicalization or anything else) are like 45+. Exactly. No one is safe. Everyone I know in my age group (15-26) can not exist without opening up their smartphone every 5 seconds to check social media or watch YouTube. There was a good documentary about this topic called The Social Network. You may have heard of it. I think it is a good starting point to this way of thinking.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Smartphones are a very powerful social glue. Better than tv, school or church. Phone says frog and the whole population hops. Propaganda like a drum, like in one of those movies with those slaves on the oars in the basement of a ship.
• seph-reed 5y ago
  "Were these the good ol days" From what I've seen, there's not a lot of people who don't gain a fair bit of psychological wellness from turning off their phone for a week. I see smartphones as a trade off: productivity for happiness.
• qwertox 5y ago
  I remember going to bed and thinking about coding problems and their solutions, instead of watching YouTube videos or reading on Reddit or HN. It's very addictive.
• sylens 5y ago
  I think there is definitely something I miss from the pre-smartphone era, and that is that the Internet was something akin to an appointment activity. You 'signed on' in the morning and maybe again after school or work. Logging into AIM was like broadcasting to your social circle that you were home and free to chat. You welcomed the instant messages, the interruptions, the socialization - because you knew you could sign off and be unreachable again. I think that era of having widespread, but not ubiquitous, access to the internet is a time period I would like to have back. For every useful or Maps or food delivery application on my phone, there's three more that steal my attention with an unwanted notification
  • Twixes 5y ago
    Can't you uninstall or limit the apps that try to steal your attention?
    • sylens 5y ago
      You can, but it's a constant ongoing maintenance. It's another attack on attention and time
  • dexterhaslem 5y ago
    disabling notifications on apps goes a long way. and they all clearly hate it and bug you to turn em back on constantly
  • majjam 5y ago
    Im planning on getting an old-school non-smart phone to take with me sometimes, just to disconnect without being uncontactable for this reason.
    • mt_ 5y ago
      I think you can do that with a smartphone. Just don't install unnecessary apps. The problem is not the device but your will, if you don't want to change you probably won't change.
• magwa101 5y ago
  Ignorance is bliss...but is a double edged fork.
• another-dave 5y ago
  Ironically ends with a "Share' button and a paid subscription link — we never used to have them either! :)
• l33tbro 5y ago
  "It used to be you'd go outside and nobody would know where the fuck you were. That's called freedom". - Tom Green. Taken from a rant [1] on this subject from a few years back [1] https://youtu.be/01Vq8_bWaTk?t=791 https://youtu.be/01Vq8_bWaTk?t=791
• kota2 5y ago
  Was a time I long to go back to. I would certainly only own a landline if other factors didn't require me maintaining a mobile phone.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• AlbertCory 5y ago
  "I’d wait an entire week to watch the next episode." -- Try Ted Lasso or Shmigadoon on Apple TV! That world is back. As for cameras: I wrote a book "Inventing the Future" about the Xerox Star (1977-1981). No one took pictures then! It's such a drag. I was sure we were on the 3rd floor of the A&E Building, and everyone told me no, it was the 1st floor. Fortunately, people at Xerox did write documents and many, many of those are up on bitsavers.org.
• emerged 5y ago
  Tons of kids ride their bikes around my parents neighborhood. They are always fiddling on their phone while riding. It seems so sad to me, not much different than if they were all smoking cigarettes. They literally can’t help themselves.
• SonnyTark 5y ago
  On paper, I'm younger than most of these but I've lived in a closed-in country under an authoritarian regime that actively blocked technology from getting in as it saw free information as a threat to its survival. When I used the internet for the first time, it was already the era of messengers and mmos. It took several years until I saw the first Nokia mobile phone, they already had a color display one out at the time so it was marvelous. Computers were seen as a luxury, classified the same as typewriters and/or game consoles so very few people understood what they were and fewer had one that's usually a decade or two old. I've experienced most of what this blog post describes despite the fact it was after 2000! and when change came it was abrupt and violent, almost like being surrounded by a technological theme-park all of a sudden. It was at times funny to see how some people who have never owned anything more advanced than a CRT tv try to figure out how to use a smart phone, I distinctly remember this one older guy who hit the breaks in the middle of the road then pulled over and got out of his car to receive what must have been one of the first mobile phone calls of his life.
  • selimthegrim 5y ago
    Serbia? Syria?
• LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  That was refreshing to read. Though I'd disagree on the non- existent surveillance, depending on the location. Maybe a bad example because movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes from 1971, but some have a core of truth in them. In case you havn't seen it, I'd recommend to do so. Also regarding the news being 'non-breaking': Uhm... Watergate? Kennedy? Maybe Apollo? And so on...
• nunez 5y ago
  > My speakers were big and my TV was small. Loved this.
• barbs 5y ago
  Related: The Fine Art of Bullshit, Killed By Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902728 Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902728
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Nition 5y ago
  I love the writing style in this essay. It reminded me of George Carlin's "modern man" monologue[1]. [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25390-i-m-a-modern-man-a-man-for-the-millennium-digital https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25390-i-m-a-modern-man-a-ma...
• jimbokun 5y ago
  > I read cereal boxes while eating breakfast and shampoo bottles while sitting on the toilet. Clearly not everyone had a Reader’s Digest subscription like my family did.
• animanoir 5y ago
  We need to embrace metamodernism to revive those days.
• Celebros 5y ago
  What I miss the most of my coming of age time during the 90s is the process of logging on and off. Once I got my Cleveland Freenet Account I loved popping on after school to check my email (which at that point was really just personal messages from a few friends) and stopping by IRC to chat. The limiting factor of dinner time and needing to free up the phone lines was great to limit daily use. Snowden’s _Permanent Record_ did a nice job capturing this feeling for those around 40.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  If you want to teach your kid what it was like before the internet, take away their phone, give them a popsicle, and tell them to go ride their bikes and play outside until the streetlights come on. When we were kids, the goto story about kidnapping was "The Ransom of Red Chief"... why in the world would someone want to take a kid? There was only one kind of mail, and it was delivered every day except Sunday, and national holidays.
  • kalleboo 5y ago
    The stranger danger scare predated the Internet being commonplace. I was a kid in the early 90's and by the mid 90's the kids going trick or treating was noticeably down because of "razors in apples" and everyone went to the mall instead.
• m000 5y ago
  And most importantly, we drank water from the garden hose.
• irrational 5y ago
  My teenager doesn’t have use of his phone right now. He was complaining that he had no way to contact his friends. I pointed to the landline and he said that wouldn’t work since all their numbers were on his phone. Plus they would never actually answer a phone call - who answers phone calls? I suggested email. None of them check email. I suggested riding his bike to their house and talking to them in person. He was aghast at the thought. If smartphones went away, I think there is an entire generation or two that really wouldn’t know how to go on living.
  • Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    You are asking your child to behave like you did while growing up, without taking into account that your son would be doing things considered rude now. I'm a fully grown adult over the age of 40. I don't answer my door if I'm not expecting someone. They can call from my driveway if they want. I don't answer phone calls in general, and hate talking on the phone. Few have issues with this as they understand that house visits and phone calls is me asking you to stop what you are doing and talk to me, someone who is just going to talk about something minor that can wait if you are busy. Email is just a letter, cold and impersonal, and isn't a way to communicate with friends, though I'll use it from time to time if it is my last resort. I'm sure they'll adapt if smartphones actually went away, but that's not what is going on with your son.
• underlines 5y ago
  Prime example of how our brains trick us with the rosy retrospection cognitive bias. "Everything was better in the past." It's also closely related to declinism. A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc. I think cherry picking negative aspects of today's world and compare it to positive aspects of the past draws a very subjective picture of how the past was. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2020/06/20/things-keep-getting-better-heres-why-your-brain-thinks-theyre-getting-worse/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2020/06/20/things-kee...
  • ImaCake 5y ago
    There is of course a classic xkcd about this [0]. I think these help a little with perspective. But my favourite is the rise in syphilis cases leading early psychologists/psychiatrists to think we were in civilizational decline because so many people would go insane from stage 4. You can read a nuanced and thoughfull take on this idea on page 6 of "The Mind Fixers" which is a pretty academic book about the history of psychiatry. 0. https://xkcd.com/1227/ https://xkcd.com/1227/
• vindarel 5y ago
  Yeah, not bad, though it's a bit too individually centered for my taste, and just a bit exaggerated (like there were no digital cameras before smartphones). I'd add: "I bought solid products and I expected them to last more than a couple years. I didn't hear my friends say that for the environment, they changed their fridge only every 2 years and a half. I didn't like all the advertising in the street or on TV, but at least I was in peace at home. I could listen for a CD in my living room peacefully, without an add in between each song or even in the middle. I had heard about kids working in African mines, but what could I do about it? I didn't have an object in my pocket that has a direct impact on them, as well as on the pollution of my county's main river because of the chip manufacture. It's not that I absolutely need this object, it's that it is very convenient (and everybody has one anyways, and they make fun of me if I don't)." Please a good writer make it sound more friendly :)
• 6510 5y ago
  Thanks for this, its good to hear the other side of the story and you wrote it well.
• peter303 5y ago
  I do not have a smartphone. The rudeness of users around me convinced me not become one of them. I have had iPads since the beginning. They run 80%-90% of smartphone apps. So I am well acquainted with their potential.
• GuB-42 5y ago
  > Scientists were trusted and conspiracy theories were for tinfoil kooks. I was exposed to more conspiracy theories in my youth (80s-90s) than today, and like today, scientists were trusted as long as they didn't put your preconceived ideas into question. The difference is that conspiracy theories used to spread undercover. So you may not know about them all, but when they reach you, they are more convincing, as if you were given access to secret knowledge, and also, debunking was more difficult. Now they are for everyone to see, but it doesn't mean people believe them, especially considering that the debunking is just as assessible. I think it is what I would call the "people are idiots" fallacy. You always assume you are smarter than "people". Because you are smart, you don't believe in whatever bullshit there is on the internet, but "people" are dumb, so they must believe it the second they get exposed to it, and in some cases, they do, but there is often more than stupidity. But I think that generally, people are smart, and except for a minority, if you can tell obvious bullshit, so can them. As for non-obvious bullshit, it is true people sometimes fall for it but so do you and me, but I don't think that's what the author means by "tinfoil theories".
• euroderf 5y ago
  When you were going to meet someone, you spoke on the landline and it was something like, "meet you at the mall in front of Sears at 630 or quarter to 7". And you had to STICK TO IT. All excuses were lame.