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Ive been doing some IT work at a cell phone store in a very low income area. There is a large number of people coming in to buy new phones or get their old ones

• hinkley 4y ago
  I wonder how they'd react if I started bitching about having to have a car to participate in society.
  • AndrewUnmuted 4y ago
  • kgermino 4y ago
    I’d posit it’s quickly getting easier to live without a car than without a smartphone in the US. Plus, even if you live in an area where a car is required you have the option to opt out and move (housing crisis aside), which isn’t an option to avoid smartphone requirements.
    • chrsig 4y ago
      well, you could always move somewhere very rural with poor cellphone reception.
    • hinkley 4y ago
      The people complaining about smart phones and the people who created the car-obsessed society are substantially the same people.
      • cafard 4y ago
        There must be few people still alive who created the car-obsessed society.
        • hinkley 4y ago
          I don’t think I could argue with the assertion that it was created for them and not by them, but there are plenty of Boomers around. The Ford Mustang was introduced 18 years after the end of World War 2.
          • alephxyz 4y ago
            If you think it's only boomers who like car-centric infrastructure, I have bad news for you.
            • Spivak 4y ago
              Yeah, this sentiment covers for sure all of Gen X and Elder Millennials. If the back half of Millennials all turn 30 and it’s the same story we can pretty confidently say that it’s not really a generational thing. I would love to ditch my car but it’s impossible in my city and I have no power to change it. I could move I guess but choosing lack of car over my friends and family feels a bit drastic.
              • hinkley 4y ago
                That doesn’t cover all of GenX. But yes, getting old sucks and walking takes some discipline.
                • throwaway4aday 4y ago
                  > walking takes some discipline and it also requires you to fully buy in to the city-centric lifestyle. Whether you like it or not there will always be a lot of people that don't want to live in an urban center or even a small town. For them, personal transportation is non-negotiable. Even people who live within walkable towns or cities will often prefer to have a car so that they can access other locations and services whenever they feel like it without having to rent or limit themselves to places accessible by mass transit. Cars just aren't going away, nor should we wish them to. I'm all for building more walkable and human scale environments, I enjoy them as much as the next person but I also want those places connected by good roads so that I can access, or leave, any of them freely.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    It may sound odd, but you are not bolstering your argument here. The parent is arguing for a way to ensure that participation in society is not bound by one's ability arrange for unrelated physical objects other than cash and ID to participate. And that is before we even get to how much having a car and cell phone governs one's life in US. Not everyone believes it is a good societal structure. Note that I am not arguing one way or another, but outright dismissal is not an appropriate counter argument.
    • hinkley 4y ago
      Oh I'm not saying either is good. I'm saying that the shoe is on the other foot now.
      • Spivak 4y ago
        Yeah, the minimum you need to participate in US society is SSN, driver’s license number, working cell phone number, credit/debit card, health insurance, car, car insurance, proof of citizenship, permanent address, internet connection and W2 or equivalent. I’ve needed all of these sans the car to interact with just government services in my state.
  • fabianhjr 4y ago
    Public Transit (from local buses to inter-city trains) should be high quality and frequent. That is reality in a lot of the world including Europe, China, and South America. I agree with the sentiment of not generally needing to have a car and fortunately that is the case in most of the world (except the USA)
    • andrepd 4y ago
      In part of Europe, China, and South America.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      More and more public transit is requiring a smartphone or an elaborate and complicated setup with contact cards. It’s getting annoying.
      • midasuni 4y ago
        Touch a piece of plastic when you start, toich again when you end. It’s not exactly complicated. You can buy the plastic for cash, or use the one almost everyone has in their wallet, or use a phone.
      • midoridensha 4y ago
        It's really not at all. In Japan, you just buy a debit card and swipe that every time you enter or exit a station. When it gets low, you stop at a vending machine and put more cash on it. It doesn't get any simpler, and it's totally anonymous.
      • fomine3 4y ago
        You underestimate how difficult to buy a correct ticket
    • eru 4y ago
      Public Transit isn't the (only) alternative to cars. Compact layouts that enable walking or biking are another alternative.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • milsorgen 4y ago
    I've made it to my late 30s only owning a car for maybe 2 or 3 of those years. I've never felt the desire, my mom always commented it was odd back when I was a teenager... But I digress, it is very possible and it's easier than ever. I grew up on the rural west coast, moved inland to an agricultural area. Never living in a proper city by most metrics. Certainly I've missed some opportunities along the way, c'est la vie, but it is easier than ever and I'm meeting more and more people like me as time goes on. I also don't have a photo ID as a general rule, but that's a whole different can of worms and in some cases much more limiting than living car free. Most people seem to create their own hurdles or embiggen real ones that they do face, certainly I do in my own ways so don't take that as a judgement just an observation. Choosing to go carless is not half the hurdle many people perceive it to be.
    • Rediscover 4y ago
      > I've made it to my late 30s only owning a car for maybe 2 or 3 of those years. Similar. I spent part of my teen years in a children's home in the U.S. -- it turns out that even though the state may go in for a [driving] learning permit (pre-req for a driving license), it won't sign off for the license to drive. So I never got a license until older and dropped it later. I'm definitely healthier for all the walking I still do :)
  • dfg4456ds7 4y ago
    Hopefully they'll react as if you were an irrational pedant, because I have been participating in society without a car my entire adult life just fine.
  • krolden 4y ago
    Very few of these people drive.
  • Paraesthetic 4y ago
    You can walk, you can't verbally authenticate
    • DoreenMichele 4y ago
      Sometimes you can. Especially in small towns where people know each other. That used to kinda be the norm.
      • Manu40 4y ago
        I have a personal rule. If I can't walk there within an hour, or the bus itself takes more than an hour to get there; I won't even apply to the job. My method of thinking on this is that people with their own vehicle won't go much further than an hour away anyways, so why would I with a bike, my own two feet; or transit for that matter. It's not like the people they are hiring with vehicles are going to get there much faster if they own a vehicle taking the same amount of time. The only time this won't be true is if they live so close they really should be walking instead to save money.
    • Manu40 4y ago
      Tell that to some of my past prospective employers. It's getting so bad, that some insist on being able to drive to work even if you live within 15 minutes walking distance. "But what about bad weather?" They ask. "I'll dress appropriately." I reply. 3 days later: Phone rings. "We're sorry, but we decided to go with someone better suited for the job." The job... was at a restaurant, as a cook. Cooks... don't need to be able to drive to work... usually. (There are maybe some jobs where driving would be ideal, or necessary, but let's be real here. Most don't need to be able to drive.)
      • supertrope 4y ago
        I’m guessing “the bus was late” is a common excuse used by those who are frequently late to work. The issue here is that they mindlessly apply a filter of if you drive to work you pass if you don’t you fail. Employees with attendance issues can still use plenty of dumb excuses. A car itself provides several: car broke down, traffic was bad, snowy roads. Those issues don’t apply to someone who can walk in. Unfortunately not being a driver is not a protected class in the US.
  • pvaldes 4y ago
    A better comparison would be the government refusing to talk with you unless you can prove that own a car from one specific brand that they like.
  • midasuni 4y ago
    I know plenty of people without a car and some without a driving license. Far more than those without a smartphone.
  • crooked-v 4y ago
    They'd probably agree with you. Having to pay to maintain a car (probably an awful one that has lots of problems) just to get anything done is distinctly bad part of being poor in America.
• deltree7 4y ago
  Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy in the ranter and general sympathy from HN code towards them. "Normal Land Line" wasn't something that came from nature. It is a sophisticated technology invented by humans with the same User Interface flaws and Laggard-Ranting that every generation goes through. When Mixed-Reality becomes popular, I'm sure there will be many complaining "why can't I just have simple smartphone" and there will probably some Gen Zers sympathizing with them and reminiscing about the simple days of smartphone. Newsflash: Adaption and Evolution is the name of the game. I can understand if a disabled person complains inability to use gadgets(although smartphones have better accessibility features), but you can bet your bottom dollar, most of these people whine because they aren't curious about the world and stubbornly refuse to adapt and the rest of the world has to bend over backwards to accommodate them?
  • macintux 4y ago
    A phone book and a touchtone (or even rotary) phone is exponentially cheaper, simpler and easier to maintain than a smartphone. Yes, it’s also exponentially more powerful, but it leaves a lot of people behind.
  • ketralnis 4y ago
    I'd be with you if these devices weren't hundreds of dollars with obsolescence lifetime treadmills measured in the ones of years and bound to a duopoly of corporate-controlled ecosystems that require opting in to onerous contract terms. Just a few of those factors might not be so bad but with all of them it could become impossible to do legally-required things like buying car insurance without being effectively legally required to look at Google ads. Or renewing your passport without agreeing to a software EULA that forbids you from ever suing Apple for leaking your private data. All of this "it's just opting in to societal progress" crap is why Experian even ever had your data to leak[1] it in the first place, and why Google and Braze and every other tech company has it too. 0: https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png 1: https://threatpost.com/experian-api-leaks-american-credit-scores/165731/ https://threatpost.com/experian-api-leaks-american-credit-sc...
    • 4y ago
• chrisseaton 4y ago
  That's because when they were young a 'normal land line' was the state of the art tech. Why were they fine using state of the art tech then? I guess older people at the time found it confusing and the people complaining to you probably thought they should get with the times. It's the same stuff just in a cycle.
  • azalemeth 4y ago
    Landlines were state-of-the-art tech more than a century ago; depending on when you define its invention it came at some point between 1844 and 1877 [1] and it was widespread by the second world war. There was a huge portion of the last century in which "just" having a landline was a relatively constant, relatively well defined utility and (from the consumer's point of view) the technology was mature and did not change much between arguably 1950 and about 1990. The rotary dial pulse dialling system was patented in 1891; the telephone I grew up using (in the 1980s) used essentially the same technology and pulse dialling gradually replaced it over the course of several decades. Most of the innovation took place on the side of the exchange, and the average telephone user probably noticed little other than changes in billing and a slowly decreasing frequency of talking to an operator. Cellphones are completely different. My "daily driver" smartphone, bought in 2017 for ~1/4 of my monthly salary, is obsolete and I have rooted it in order to continue to install security updates. This has locked me out of my Danish bank account. My mum's 1980s PSTN phone still works, even when the mains electricity is out, no technology change required. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_dialing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_dialing
    • chrisseaton 4y ago
      > Landlines were state-of-the-art tech more than a century ago And they were state-of-the-art until the late 1990s, when mass consumer mobile phones became a thing. You can either be stubborn about tech, or adopt a grown-mindset and learn about new things. Their generation developed this technology - it can't be beyond them to learn it? > My mum's 1980s PSTN phone still works Well it doesn't for much of society - that's the point.
• OJFord 4y ago
  Why do they need to have one? I dislike phone reliance (both in myself and others) and have spent periods without one. I think I've settled on having one for certain conveniences, but it's perfectly possible not to (especially if one 'HATE's it so much).
  • kalleboo 4y ago
    There are restaurants with only digital menus, there are bars that only take electronic payments, gyms that only have a digital membership card, parking lots only payable via app, during covid there were countries that required quarantine apps on entry. Sure you could say "just don't go to those places" but then you're slowly withdrawing from society as these things gain in ubiquity.
    • serf 4y ago
      >Sure you could say "just don't go to those places" but then you're slowly withdrawing from society as these things gain in ubiquity. conversely the only reason that these companies enforce such policies is because they get away with doing so and people participate.
    • s0rce 4y ago
      I hate digital menus. I don't like being on my phone when I go out for dinner (unless I'm by myself) and looking at a nice menu was part of the experience.
      • ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
        Seoul has been 'modernizing' bus stops. The route information, which used to be printed on posters at 1200 dpi, is now visible on large screens at 300 dpi, but the graphics have not been updated. As a result it is very challenging to see the details of most routes.
    • zdragnar 4y ago
      Dang. Literally none of those things exist where I live in the US. In fact, there's a food truck that comes through every once in awhile that is still cash-only.