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Do you use paper maps to figure out where you are going and stop at payphones to make calls?
by wintermutestwin 5y ago
Do you use paper maps to figure out where you are going and stop at payphones to make calls?
- ehnto 5y agoCan you drive from home to work without being hand held by technological pacifiers?
- standardUser 5y agoYou drive in complete silence? Or were you just singling out only specific forms of technology with which to mock a stranger?
- qq4 5y agoI drive in silence. I don't understand why some people feel the need to _always_ be listening to something.
- ehnto 5y agoThey were mocking someone for choosing to do without technology, it was just a snippy retort. Why aren't you jumping down their throat? edit: Turns out I was wrong about the parent's intent. For what it's worth, I do actually drive in silence a lot. There is something about a vehicle in transit that temporarily relieves you of responsibilities outside of the drive, and it's a great time to reflect. I could reflect on this comment thread, for example. Two times in the past few months I've been wrong about someone's intent on HN and met them with a little too much spice than was fair, that's worth reflecting on.
- esalman 5y agoI sometimes drive in complete silence. The friction between the tires and the asphalt is close to white noise. It contains a range of high and low frequencies that you can't easily filter out, something that I tried to deal with at a computer vision class project involving self-driving tech. Also it can be amazingly therapeutic.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoI do. Is this unusual?
- nindalf 5y agoThis is unnecessarily rude. Implying that a person needs a pacifier like an infant is snarky. > please don’t sneer As the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) say.
- ehnto 5y agoIt was a counterpoint to his sneer, I felt like it was a productive re-contextualization of their narrow viewpoint. I am really surprised people seem to be missing the parent comments snark but not mine, it was really on the nose.
- nindalf 5y agoIf you see someone sneering, then request them not to sneer. Link them to the HN guidelines. Counter-sneering ruins the discussion.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
- amarshall 5y agoThis is missing the point, I think. The point is not to be disconnected entirely, it’s to have control over that connection. While driving, one can turn off their phone, run a fully open-source device, old-school GPS, or whatever. But cars don’t give much if any control over the software they’re running or their broader connectivity. They’re oft becoming highly-integrated proprietary devices.
- wintermutestwin 5y agoGood point, but can't your phone's location still be tracked when powered off?
- sjwalter 5y agoExactly one phone on the market, the latest and greatest Apple phone, has this capability. So, no. My flipphone can't be tracked when the battery is taken out.
- amarshall 5y agoThis functionality can be disabled in Settings, though.
- amarshall 5y agoMaybe, but in the most paranoid case it’s a lot more practical and straightforward to put a small device in a faraday cage or remove the battery than doing so for the car being actively driven.
- dqpb 5y agoBefore iPhones, humans had a rather impressive ability to create a mental map of a city. Upon seeing or hearing an address, they could rapidly plan a path to the location with nothing more than their own mind!
- sjwalter 5y agoI do use paper maps as my phone doesn't support apps or maps. They're surprisingly useful. Payphones, nope. Still got a flip phone. Yep, can be used to track me, but I don't take it everywhere. Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly. I don't agree with that.
- dylan604 5y ago>but I don't take it everywhere. at least having the option of taking the battery out while still taking it with you just in case you do need it is a bonus
- wintermutestwin 5y ago>Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly. That wasn't my position. I'm sorry it was easy to assume it was. I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone and that it is tracking you in a more ubiquitous way.
- deltarholamda 5y ago>I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone Man, I remember driving in the 80s, we just wandered around lost for two decades. I live in West Undershirt, PA now because I just happened to end up there when I went out for pizza. One time, around 1998, I went to visit a friend in Houston. All I had were some sketchy instructions given over email, and I ended up a warlord ruling over the stretch of I-45 between Juan's Tacos and the Sherwin-Williams.
- sjwalter 5y ago>I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone Dude, I think you should really question this. I've been smartphone free for over a year. It's... easy. In fact, easier than having a smartphone in many ways! So strange how quickly our society became psychologically chained to these blipping bleeping distracting infernal machines.
- WillPostForFood 5y agoNot trying to be snarky, but if you use your brain to figure out where you are going (perhaps referring to paper or digital maps before leaving), you learn your route, understand the geography of your location, and don't create a permanent dependency on being connect to the internet.
- wintermutestwin 5y agoAs a consultant in the 90s, I had to go to hundreds of client locations all over the Bay Area. I had a Thomas map book for each county and had to waste much brain space and time figuring it all out. Going back seems insanely primitive.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoMaps were downloadable once, maps.me still is. No reason that can't continue, besides big brother having a vested interest in what you are doing.
- dylan604 5y agoBig Brother to me is still the gov't vs individual EvilCorps hoovering up data to make a buck. Both could still be "the man", but to me Big Brother is specific. Maybe I have the term wrong or has it become more encompassing?
- sjwalter 5y agoThere isn't much of a difference these days, from where I'm sitting. The government and the heads of bigcos are pretty much on the same teams.
- dylan604 5y agoThis is just quite simply sad in how true it is.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoOnce out, public info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
- dylan604 5y agoEvilCorps are hoovering up a hell of lot more data than I voluntarily give them. I give no data voluntarily to FB, yet with all of their track bullshit they take it from me. I have no idea if a website is using their code or not, so by me browsing said website is not me giving them my permission. Same with Googs and their analytics.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
- stcredzero 5y agoI've done this in real life!
- wintermutestwin 5y agoI have too - back in the 80s-90s. I couldn't imagine going back to that. Did you do it in the post smartphone era?
- stcredzero 5y ago1st time I drove across the US to see stuff was the summer of 1992. I put 10000 miles on the car zig-zagging across the country, up the west coast and to Alaska.