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I don't think it's healthy or normal to feel uncomfortable without a communications device. It's a sign of dependency. One should be able to put it out of mind
by nonrandomstring 4y ago
I don't think it's healthy or normal to feel uncomfortable without a
communications device. It's a sign of dependency. One should be able
to put it out of mind and focus on deep tasks, leisure, interpersonal
commitments and general real-life living without a neurotic impulse to
check and inhabit a digital world.
I don't have a smartphone (prefer a landline but keep an old Nokia
around too), so my life is more organised around emails and desktop
based communication. I recognised back in the 90s that it used to take
me hours to "decompress" from tech immersion. I would ruminate on what
messages I might be missing, and think through communications in my
mind in a quite obsessive way.
That was over 20 years ago. These days I'll go for a couple of days
without thinking about the internet. I can happily live without a
phone for a week or more no worries, and frequently do.
It's a long journey and there are constant pressures and temptations
to over-use again. I wrote a book about coping with that.
It probably sounds as if I'm talking like a cognitive behavioural
therapist. That's because I truly believe that smartphone use is fully
congruent with addictive behaviours - not just for a few people, as
was common thinking a few years ago, but for everybody, and as
mounting scientific evidence supports there are numerous genuine harms
both individual and societal [1]. In 2022 I no longer feel alone or
unusual in this regard, because I see the world is waking up to it.
The question then is how we raise awareness of this emerging threat to
mental wellbeing, and how we deal with it. Mobile technology certainly
has its uses, but we must balance that with social/technological
structures that give people ample space to control their own
technology, make space and abstain from it as desired. A truly
advanced technological society would meet this need. At present the
gushing convergence on smartphones as "necessary" panacea is
pathological in the extreme, and I am sure, simply fuelled by the
profits of the tech industry rather than any underlying "need".
Technology is becoming what is being _done_ to us.
[1] No I won't. Please have the good manners to Google for yourself
(or go back through my many well refernced posts here).
- com2kid 4y agoThat's nice and all, but when I travel overseas having a universal translator with me is super cool. Being able to order a safe reliable taxi in most major cities, also super cool. If you don't want email on your phone, don't set it up. But having a map that redirects me around traffic accidents in real time saves me a lot of time. I'm not going to argue against smartphones being horrible little dopamine boxes, because they are, but you can get a smartphone and set it up as a purely utilitarian device rather easily.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> purely utilitarian device You're absolutely right kid. Sincerely. I look forward to the day when the real utility shines through again. And I come from a time (as a now well bearded computer nerd) when it was all utility and coolness. But we're in some weird in-between days [1] where motivations have gotten distorted, ideals have got lost, and the utility just isn't enough any more to stave of the wrongness. FWIW I'm an optimist and beleieve we'll make it through and take back tech, but right now we need to take a long look at this. [1] The fancy word is "interregnum" - a period "caught between two times, one world that is already dead, and the other waiting to be born."
- sidpatil 4y agoI think this encapsulates your point: https://pics.onsizzle.com/born-too-late-to-explore-the-earth-borntoosoon-to-enplore-1250950.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/born-too-late-to-explore-the-earth...
- nonrandomstring 4y agoYes , wre're in the gold^H^H^H^H nicotine-yellow stained age of dankness :)
- com2kid 4y ago> You're absolutely right kid. Sincerely. I look forward to the day when the real utility shines through again. And I come from a time (as a now well bearded computer nerd) when it was all utility and coolness. Sure, my Palm was amazingly useful, a much better productivity tool than my smartphone is, minus the maps and real time data stuff. Having a button dedicated to "pull up my todo list" is a life changer. I wish I could buy a smartphone that did that, or even just let my lock screen be taken over by my todo list. Given modern tech, I wonder how thin a Palm like device could be made now days.