Feature phone user here. I had a smartphone for about a year in 2009. I gave it away after seeing four people in a row waiting for the train consumed by their p

Feature phone user here. I had a smartphone for about a year in 2009. I gave it away after seeing four people in a row waiting for the train consumed by their pinging devices. I can't recommend the feature phone experience warmly enough. About the only thing I really miss is a decent camera in my phone. Lugging a camera along is a bit of a nuisance. All of this doesn't completely free me from the attention economy though. Firstly, I distract myself. I still read the news more than is good for me. From time to time, I'll even play silly computer games excessively. FOSS games, but still quite distracting. Secondly, as the article describes, there's the profound cultural shift I have to cope with. Many people, even friends, don't even think about asking me for permission to let Siri, Alexa or Google overhear our conversations. Just because they want to be plugged in. When we are discussing what year Greg Lemond beat Laurent Fignon in the Tour de France, is the goal knowing some useless trivia? No, it's the conversation. The social process is the goal.