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I wanted to say this. I hate how small the world has become and how we're supposed to be "reachable" all the time. Some of my friends will freak out if I don't

I wanted to say this. I hate how small the world has become and how we're supposed to be "reachable" all the time. Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes. I said "hard no" explaining that it meant that it meant that I could never watch a movie uninterrupted, read a book, take a nap, etc. Also, Driving. I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen). I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails. I have another friend who always calls on his commute home and gets offended when I don't answer. The idea alone that someone is obligated to answer the phone is insane. What if I don't want to spend an hour shooting the shit with you because I'm doing something else? I miss the days when I could just walk away from contact.

swayvil 5y ago
Soon they will replace the "phone ring" with an electric shock. Mark my words. Like in 1984. People who want to "spend time alone" are deviant, diseased and antisocial. And must be stopped.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  You're missing the tree in the forest. No one is forced to look at their phone, the reality is that people have trained themselves to want it.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    There are 6 anecdotes in this thread where friends and family apply force to get a person to look at their phone. Social force, but still. Force. Consider the soft forces of marketing, distraction, conformity, attraction and temptation. They are as real as a twisted arm.
    - solaceb 5y ago
      Sure, I agree, it's all very coercive. But I think the point really is... physical force isn't even necessary. We're already addicted
      - swayvil 5y ago
        The coercive forces are beneath discussion because we're all addicted anyway? I dunno man. That sounds weird.
      - serf 5y ago
        even if you ignore addiction , mobile phones have been integrated into society in so many infrastructure-like roles that they are hardly at all optional or 'ignorable' at this point. When you live in a world that requires bills to be paid via mobile, rent to be paid via mobile, mass transit tickets bought via mobile, physical location reservation via mobile, as well as any customer service only available via mobile... who cares about personal addiction; normal life isn't feasible without a mobile phone at that point, and very few (if any at all) mobile phones are designed from the premise that they should respect your attention. The mobile phones that are designed to preserve the users attention are widely incompatible with any functions that the user needs (billpay/specific group apps, whatever) to stay integrated with the systems being forced upon them, so those options are already non-starter. That means this problem is worth discussing -- non-compulsive normal people as well as compulsive addicts are being affected by the lack of 'respect for attention' that mobile phones have, and this problem intersects with the 'required prevalence' of mobile phones across the world.
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      And there are quite a few anecdotes on how to prevent people from forcing you, some of them written by me :) My overall point, however, is that there will never be an external negative reinforcement to look on your phone. We all have it internalized already and that's far more compelling than any external pressure ever could be.
  - tharne 5y ago
    > No one is forced to look at their phone, the reality is that people have trained themselves to want it. Not quite. Tech and social media companies have spent billions to make their devices and apps as addictive as possible.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    There are many employers who feel they can contact you at anytime. When I had a smartphone, I never told my employer. I told him I only had a Landline, and I had a chatty roommate. On the days I felt they might call, I just took the phone off the hook.
  - notJim 5y ago
    It's not just training ourselves, it's companies training us. When people talk about dopamine hits from getting a like on a post, or feeling a buzz from an app, they are explicitly setting out to create a behavioral pattern that benefits them in some way. They are training us like Pavlov's dogs, and while humans are smarter, we do respond to operant conditioning. At the end of the day, we as people have to react to this environment that's been created, but the people who created it knew what they were doing.
kshacker 5y ago
> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on some work activities but those are just the high priority visible stuff otherwise maybe if someone did not remind and make it a priority maybe it was anyways not a priority. But then things slip through the crack once in a while.
- ngngngng 5y ago
  > If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. As someone that lives life like this, yes, that's the point. If it's really important, they can ping me again and remind me to respond. Or when I have some downtime I'll peruse through my messages and emails again and stumble upon it and remember to reply.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Pinging me again sometimes makes sense (if we have a relationship and it's important) but it doesn't scale well. As someone who gets a lot of outside requests to do things, second and third emails to ask "did you miss my email?" get tiresome in a hurry. (Sometimes I genuinely missed something interesting but this is rare.)
- Sebb767 5y ago
  > I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. The secret is to not be interrupted. If you're already reading the text, you might as well go and answer. If you want to change something you will need to stop being interrupted (close the IM window, put your phone on silent, ...) and check once you have time. If you don't have time for a while, possibly give it a quick skim in case something important happened. Things will always slip through the cracks. If you attend every interruption, it will once in a while interrupt an interruption itself and you're at status quo. At worst, put things on a todo list. It's possible to do it.
- 5y ago
sylens 5y ago
I am optimistic that I can use the upcoming Focus mode in iOS 15 to start broadcasting my unavailability to my contacts
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Agreed. I've been missing this since AIM went bust. I also wish there were a way for me to send a low-priority message to my wife so that it didn't notify her regardless of her notification settings. We send each other news articles throughout the day but don't really want to interrupt each other. It would be great if there were a sender-side option that could enable this. I've thought about using a shared document in the Notes app, or just use a different messaging app for low-priority stuff, but it seems like too much overhead. Does anyone else have a way of handling this?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Email? IMO, no one should have have email that sends notifications.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      When we're on our computers, email notifications come up unless we're in DND (and even then, they show up whenever your email client is visible regardless).
      - ghaff 5y ago
        For me, I have to open my email browser window to see new emails. No notifications. (And no client which I would set to 100% DND if I had one.)
        gnicholas 5y ago
        Fair enough! I don't think email threads are best for daily spousal communication, but perhaps for some people this could work. It sure would be easier to search than Apple Messages!
i_am_proteus 5y ago
>I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen) I'd like to address this in a non-judgemental way: not answering texts while driving should be the norm. It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner.
- blooalien 5y ago
  > "It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner." This statement has been proven true by multiple studies now, many of them coming to the conclusion that texting while driving can be as dangerous or more dangerous than driving drunk.
  - ARandomerDude 5y ago
    But disproven by my 20-ish years of safely texting while driving. You have to be smart about it but it can be done safely.
    - bittercynic 5y ago
      You did it and it turned out OK, but that doesn't mean it was a safe thing to do.
    - mendigou 5y ago
      The only smart thing is not doing it. I know people who regularly drunk-drove for 10+ years without accidents. Are they being smart about it too? Please don't put other people's life at risk because you feel smarter. Don't text and drive.
      - Noumenon72 5y ago
        If you could turn off being drunk at any point when you felt you needed more concentration -- foggy night, urge to speed, narrow turns -- it would be far safer to drive when drunk. There are many reasons why the chart of auto fatalities is dominated by those with less than high school degrees[1], but one is that accurate risk assessment and good choices matter. For example, "Should I send a text one word at a time once an hour on a straight road going through Nebraska in broad daylight, or should I text continually with both hands in heavy traffic?" The first is a risk easily worth taking, even with other people's lives. 1. https://schultzmyers.com/low-income-missourians-more-likely-to-die-in-car-crashes/ https://schultzmyers.com/low-income-missourians-more-likely-...
Fr0styMatt88 5y ago
This is something I've been personally trying to get better at. As someone who did a lot of instant messaging in the 90s (think ICQ and IRC) I would think nothing of shooting off texts to people whenever I felt like it via SMS. There was never an expectation of immediately being answered back then and I always thought of messaging as 'write it while you remember and don't expect a response until whenever'. If something was truly urgent I'd call. Except that's not how other people would perceive it. I've since learned that it can be incredibly annoying to others, to the point where some people would actually get distressed thinking they would have to answer the texts. Couple that with a bad habit of sending many short texts (it's how you'd write on messaging in the old days) and you have one REALLY REALLY ANNOYING FRIEND (regrettably I was that annoying friend). So I guess I just want to apologize profusely from the other side of the fence. I'm trying to be much more mindful these days about whether that chit-chat message REALLY needs to be sent RIGHT NOW, or can it just wait for a conversation at a later time? I'm trying to be much more self-aware in this regard.
- notJim 5y ago
  In my view, if people are getting annoyed you're texting them, it's on them. They're the ones assuming you expect an immediate response, unless you're complaining about it. If you're getting annoyed about them not replying, that's on you.
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    I think for many people, especially parents, they feel an obligation to at least read texts immediately to see if some action is required, and for whatever reason they are not up to the task of setting up different notifications for their kids and spouse. In my circles text is generally for when you want to get the message to someone right away, and email is for when they should read at their convenience.
    - hunter2_ 5y ago
      > text is generally for when you want to get the message to someone right away, and email is for when they should read at their convenience I wish messaging apps gave the sender the ability to hint at urgency, like the priority header that some email clients support, and then the recipient would be able to use that (or choose to ignore it) instead of the relatively rudimentary controls typically available today. A recipient can put their whole phone silent mode, vibrate mode, or ringtone mode; use DND mode, perhaps with a schedule, perhaps with exceptions for contacts; specify a ringtone per contact; mute specific group messages -- all of these have one thing in common, which is that if the sender has something unusually important or unusually unimportant to say, they're stuck with generating whatever type of notification the recipient already decided is appropriate for a typical message from that sender. Using phone calls for higher urgency and email for lower urgency is usually good enough, but achieving that same effect in-band through a messaging app for continuity of history would be even better.
hughrr 5y ago
My ex wife was like that. One reason she's an ex wife. I lost a job due to her once because she phoned the office after I didn't respond to an SMS while I was in a very tough meeting with a client. I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may not even respond immediately. I took this to extremes and a couple of weekends back I actually went for a day long solo hike with zero technology with me at all past a torch, map, compass and alcohol stove. I didn't even have any way of telling the time with me. It was invigorating with the obligation to communicate and steal my attention removed. What was most surprising was the removal of a camera and watch. Rather than being focused on recording my journey and keeping to a schedule I was focused on enjoying it. This has led to considerably more vivid memories and a much higher level of satisfaction. A trip I will always remember.
- dwighttk 5y ago
  The only reason I take my phone with me on hikes is for the camera. One day I’d like to get a dumbcamera and leave my phone behind more. I don’t take a ton of pictures but do like to have the option.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I admit I use the GPS although I don't typically depend on it. (At least for anything serious.)
    - dwighttk 5y ago
      I’d like to get to places that I’d want to use gps. Most of my hikes are on pretty clear trails that I know.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      I do carry bottom end etrex 10 with me but that’s for tracking route later and updating OSM. I’ve never used it for navigation.
  - bittercynic 5y ago
megablast 5y ago
> Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes. This is on you. Plenty of people manage it. Try turning your phone of.
hugey010 5y ago
Unknowingly, I've trained my friends and family to assume they aren't going to get an answer immediately. They now text to call when I have time. Or they immediately get to the point: "wanna go riding tomorrow" instead of "hey whats up". Some people are put off by this and others find it endearing, I couldn't care less what they think. My time is my time and I do with it what I please. That means being there for others when they need it, which means being the hell off my phone when I am there.
notJim 5y ago
> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails. This is the way. My whole family is like this, and it's awesome. Sometimes people are too busy and don't reply, but no one gets offended. It can be annoying when planning, but overall it's great. > I have another friend who always calls on his commute home and gets offended when I don't answer. Similarly, we have a rule that it's not rude to call to shoot the shit, but it's also not rude to send the person straight to voicemail for any reason. It's so nice to just be able to call my sister out of the blue and know that if I'm bothering her, she won't pick up.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
I did a year long experiment; no phone. It was life and perspective changing. I hate that because of work and personal circumstances I cant do it now, but there is so much value in completely disconnecting when you need/want to. We shouldnt feel ashamed that this feels wierd to us ~Xennials(+-10yr) having grown up in a time of landline only pots (and phreakin!) Frankly, as Snowden recently said, our phones are probably our greatest security threat as a country. Going off the digital grid is almost impossible, but knowing how is a matter of national security... Which is why breaches like OPM etc are so egregious; because once the data is out there, its too late to take back. My problem is that listening to Drake and Binney, it seems greed was allowed to take over policy decisions in order to maximize kickbacks while failing to protect americans privacy.
animal531 5y ago
I knew an older guy who phrased it that his phone existed for his convenience, not for the people around him.

swayvil 5y ago

Soon they will replace the "phone ring" with an electric shock. Mark my words. Like in 1984. People who want to "spend time alone" are deviant, diseased and antisocial. And must be stopped.

Sebb767 5y ago
You're missing the tree in the forest. No one is forced to look at their phone, the reality is that people have trained themselves to want it.
- swayvil 5y ago
  There are 6 anecdotes in this thread where friends and family apply force to get a person to look at their phone. Social force, but still. Force. Consider the soft forces of marketing, distraction, conformity, attraction and temptation. They are as real as a twisted arm.
  - solaceb 5y ago
    Sure, I agree, it's all very coercive. But I think the point really is... physical force isn't even necessary. We're already addicted
    - swayvil 5y ago
      The coercive forces are beneath discussion because we're all addicted anyway? I dunno man. That sounds weird.
    - serf 5y ago
      even if you ignore addiction , mobile phones have been integrated into society in so many infrastructure-like roles that they are hardly at all optional or 'ignorable' at this point. When you live in a world that requires bills to be paid via mobile, rent to be paid via mobile, mass transit tickets bought via mobile, physical location reservation via mobile, as well as any customer service only available via mobile... who cares about personal addiction; normal life isn't feasible without a mobile phone at that point, and very few (if any at all) mobile phones are designed from the premise that they should respect your attention. The mobile phones that are designed to preserve the users attention are widely incompatible with any functions that the user needs (billpay/specific group apps, whatever) to stay integrated with the systems being forced upon them, so those options are already non-starter. That means this problem is worth discussing -- non-compulsive normal people as well as compulsive addicts are being affected by the lack of 'respect for attention' that mobile phones have, and this problem intersects with the 'required prevalence' of mobile phones across the world.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    And there are quite a few anecdotes on how to prevent people from forcing you, some of them written by me :) My overall point, however, is that there will never be an external negative reinforcement to look on your phone. We all have it internalized already and that's far more compelling than any external pressure ever could be.
- tharne 5y ago
  > No one is forced to look at their phone, the reality is that people have trained themselves to want it. Not quite. Tech and social media companies have spent billions to make their devices and apps as addictive as possible.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  There are many employers who feel they can contact you at anytime. When I had a smartphone, I never told my employer. I told him I only had a Landline, and I had a chatty roommate. On the days I felt they might call, I just took the phone off the hook.
- notJim 5y ago
  It's not just training ourselves, it's companies training us. When people talk about dopamine hits from getting a like on a post, or feeling a buzz from an app, they are explicitly setting out to create a behavioral pattern that benefits them in some way. They are training us like Pavlov's dogs, and while humans are smarter, we do respond to operant conditioning. At the end of the day, we as people have to react to this environment that's been created, but the people who created it knew what they were doing.

kshacker 5y ago

> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. Even for work. I do find time to focus 4 hours on some work activities but those are just the high priority visible stuff otherwise maybe if someone did not remind and make it a priority maybe it was anyways not a priority. But then things slip through the crack once in a while.

ngngngng 5y ago
> If I neglect / defer something now, I would likely get back to it next week. As someone that lives life like this, yes, that's the point. If it's really important, they can ping me again and remind me to respond. Or when I have some downtime I'll peruse through my messages and emails again and stumble upon it and remember to reply.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Pinging me again sometimes makes sense (if we have a relationship and it's important) but it doesn't scale well. As someone who gets a lot of outside requests to do things, second and third emails to ask "did you miss my email?" get tiresome in a hurry. (Sometimes I genuinely missed something interesting but this is rare.)
Sebb767 5y ago
> I would very much like to do what you say but with a million interrupts a day, it is now or never. The secret is to not be interrupted. If you're already reading the text, you might as well go and answer. If you want to change something you will need to stop being interrupted (close the IM window, put your phone on silent, ...) and check once you have time. If you don't have time for a while, possibly give it a quick skim in case something important happened. Things will always slip through the cracks. If you attend every interruption, it will once in a while interrupt an interruption itself and you're at status quo. At worst, put things on a todo list. It's possible to do it.
5y ago

sylens 5y ago

I am optimistic that I can use the upcoming Focus mode in iOS 15 to start broadcasting my unavailability to my contacts

gnicholas 5y ago
Agreed. I've been missing this since AIM went bust. I also wish there were a way for me to send a low-priority message to my wife so that it didn't notify her regardless of her notification settings. We send each other news articles throughout the day but don't really want to interrupt each other. It would be great if there were a sender-side option that could enable this. I've thought about using a shared document in the Notes app, or just use a different messaging app for low-priority stuff, but it seems like too much overhead. Does anyone else have a way of handling this?
- ghaff 5y ago
  Email? IMO, no one should have have email that sends notifications.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    When we're on our computers, email notifications come up unless we're in DND (and even then, they show up whenever your email client is visible regardless).
    - ghaff 5y ago
      For me, I have to open my email browser window to see new emails. No notifications. (And no client which I would set to 100% DND if I had one.)
      - gnicholas 5y ago
        Fair enough! I don't think email threads are best for daily spousal communication, but perhaps for some people this could work. It sure would be easier to search than Apple Messages!

i_am_proteus 5y ago

>I don't answer texts while I'm driving because I literally got in an accident texting (it was a freak circumstance, but these things do happen) I'd like to address this in a non-judgemental way: not answering texts while driving should be the norm. It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner.

blooalien 5y ago
> "It's not possible to operate a vehicle in motion and text simultaneously in a safe manner." This statement has been proven true by multiple studies now, many of them coming to the conclusion that texting while driving can be as dangerous or more dangerous than driving drunk.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  But disproven by my 20-ish years of safely texting while driving. You have to be smart about it but it can be done safely.
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    You did it and it turned out OK, but that doesn't mean it was a safe thing to do.
  - mendigou 5y ago
    The only smart thing is not doing it. I know people who regularly drunk-drove for 10+ years without accidents. Are they being smart about it too? Please don't put other people's life at risk because you feel smarter. Don't text and drive.
    - Noumenon72 5y ago
      If you could turn off being drunk at any point when you felt you needed more concentration -- foggy night, urge to speed, narrow turns -- it would be far safer to drive when drunk. There are many reasons why the chart of auto fatalities is dominated by those with less than high school degrees[1], but one is that accurate risk assessment and good choices matter. For example, "Should I send a text one word at a time once an hour on a straight road going through Nebraska in broad daylight, or should I text continually with both hands in heavy traffic?" The first is a risk easily worth taking, even with other people's lives. 1. https://schultzmyers.com/low-income-missourians-more-likely-to-die-in-car-crashes/ https://schultzmyers.com/low-income-missourians-more-likely-...

Fr0styMatt88 5y ago

This is something I've been personally trying to get better at. As someone who did a lot of instant messaging in the 90s (think ICQ and IRC) I would think nothing of shooting off texts to people whenever I felt like it via SMS. There was never an expectation of immediately being answered back then and I always thought of messaging as 'write it while you remember and don't expect a response until whenever'. If something was truly urgent I'd call. Except that's not how other people would perceive it. I've since learned that it can be incredibly annoying to others, to the point where some people would actually get distressed thinking they would have to answer the texts. Couple that with a bad habit of sending many short texts (it's how you'd write on messaging in the old days) and you have one REALLY REALLY ANNOYING FRIEND (regrettably I was that annoying friend). So I guess I just want to apologize profusely from the other side of the fence. I'm trying to be much more mindful these days about whether that chit-chat message REALLY needs to be sent RIGHT NOW, or can it just wait for a conversation at a later time? I'm trying to be much more self-aware in this regard.

notJim 5y ago
In my view, if people are getting annoyed you're texting them, it's on them. They're the ones assuming you expect an immediate response, unless you're complaining about it. If you're getting annoyed about them not replying, that's on you.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  I think for many people, especially parents, they feel an obligation to at least read texts immediately to see if some action is required, and for whatever reason they are not up to the task of setting up different notifications for their kids and spouse. In my circles text is generally for when you want to get the message to someone right away, and email is for when they should read at their convenience.
  - hunter2_ 5y ago
    > text is generally for when you want to get the message to someone right away, and email is for when they should read at their convenience I wish messaging apps gave the sender the ability to hint at urgency, like the priority header that some email clients support, and then the recipient would be able to use that (or choose to ignore it) instead of the relatively rudimentary controls typically available today. A recipient can put their whole phone silent mode, vibrate mode, or ringtone mode; use DND mode, perhaps with a schedule, perhaps with exceptions for contacts; specify a ringtone per contact; mute specific group messages -- all of these have one thing in common, which is that if the sender has something unusually important or unusually unimportant to say, they're stuck with generating whatever type of notification the recipient already decided is appropriate for a typical message from that sender. Using phone calls for higher urgency and email for lower urgency is usually good enough, but achieving that same effect in-band through a messaging app for continuity of history would be even better.

hughrr 5y ago

My ex wife was like that. One reason she's an ex wife. I lost a job due to her once because she phoned the office after I didn't respond to an SMS while I was in a very tough meeting with a client. I now have my phone on do not disturb 24/7. I will choose when I participate in messaging. I also disable iMessage on my Mac. If someone comes up to me and talks to me, I may not even respond immediately. I took this to extremes and a couple of weekends back I actually went for a day long solo hike with zero technology with me at all past a torch, map, compass and alcohol stove. I didn't even have any way of telling the time with me. It was invigorating with the obligation to communicate and steal my attention removed. What was most surprising was the removal of a camera and watch. Rather than being focused on recording my journey and keeping to a schedule I was focused on enjoying it. This has led to considerably more vivid memories and a much higher level of satisfaction. A trip I will always remember.

dwighttk 5y ago
The only reason I take my phone with me on hikes is for the camera. One day I’d like to get a dumbcamera and leave my phone behind more. I don’t take a ton of pictures but do like to have the option.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I admit I use the GPS although I don't typically depend on it. (At least for anything serious.)
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    I’d like to get to places that I’d want to use gps. Most of my hikes are on pretty clear trails that I know.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    I do carry bottom end etrex 10 with me but that’s for tracking route later and updating OSM. I’ve never used it for navigation.
- bittercynic 5y ago

megablast 5y ago

> Some of my friends will freak out if I don't text back in as little as 5 minutes. A particular needy friend once tried to get me to "promise" that I would always return her texts within 10 minutes. This is on you. Plenty of people manage it. Try turning your phone of.

hugey010 5y ago

Unknowingly, I've trained my friends and family to assume they aren't going to get an answer immediately. They now text to call when I have time. Or they immediately get to the point: "wanna go riding tomorrow" instead of "hey whats up". Some people are put off by this and others find it endearing, I couldn't care less what they think. My time is my time and I do with it what I please. That means being there for others when they need it, which means being the hell off my phone when I am there.

notJim 5y ago

> I have purposefully started training my friends by being erratic with my texts/messages/e-mails. This is the way. My whole family is like this, and it's awesome. Sometimes people are too busy and don't reply, but no one gets offended. It can be annoying when planning, but overall it's great. > I have another friend who always calls on his commute home and gets offended when I don't answer. Similarly, we have a rule that it's not rude to call to shoot the shit, but it's also not rude to send the person straight to voicemail for any reason. It's so nice to just be able to call my sister out of the blue and know that if I'm bothering her, she won't pick up.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

I did a year long experiment; no phone. It was life and perspective changing. I hate that because of work and personal circumstances I cant do it now, but there is so much value in completely disconnecting when you need/want to. We shouldnt feel ashamed that this feels wierd to us ~Xennials(+-10yr) having grown up in a time of landline only pots (and phreakin!) Frankly, as Snowden recently said, our phones are probably our greatest security threat as a country. Going off the digital grid is almost impossible, but knowing how is a matter of national security... Which is why breaches like OPM etc are so egregious; because once the data is out there, its too late to take back. My problem is that listening to Drake and Binney, it seems greed was allowed to take over policy decisions in order to maximize kickbacks while failing to protect americans privacy.

animal531 5y ago

I knew an older guy who phrased it that his phone existed for his convenience, not for the people around him.