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I recall, pre-iPhone, sitting in a pub waiting for a friend to arrive, staring into the middle-distance. I noticed a young man sitting at the bar with a phone.
by jjgreen 2y ago
I recall, pre-iPhone, sitting in a pub waiting for a friend to arrive, staring into the middle-distance. I noticed a young man sitting at the bar with a phone. He'd pick it up, check for messages, put it down, take a sip of beer then his leg would start to judder (he was on a bar stool), then repeat the whole thing. A cadence of around 45s. "What a weirdo" I thought to myself. Turns out I was the weirdo, heh.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoYep. When I worked at Apple and took the (Apple) bus to work, I would arrive early at the bus stop and wait with the other employees. Lined up, everyone had their phones out, staring down. Me, I was looking at the old out-of-comnmision payphone, at the cars going by, at the copies of "Avisador" in the busted newspaper stand. Boredom is a good thing for the brain. And, honestly, I must be of the older generation because I find nothing very interesting on my phone. It takes pictures and gives me directions. I'm a lap-topper.
- heartbreak 2y ago> I find nothing very interesting on my phone. It contains the entire Internet? If you see me on my phone at a bus stop, I’m probably reading a book.
- 2muchcoffeeman 2y agoThe internet is not really organised in a way for you to do anything useful if you are bored. There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. In fact, all the stuff we’ve designed to capture attention is almost the exact opposite of a good use of the internet. I find it very difficult to queue up good content to read or listen to on a daily basis. And I try. Imagine all the people without the time to discover enough good content.
- hk__2 2y ago> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take when you have nothing else to do. Good newspapers usually allow you to do that.
- ibejoeb 2y ago> There’s no “learn about the world” course you take There's practically an undoable number of hours of free courses on Coursera, Udemy, Khan Academy, and others. Thousands of hours of interesting material on youtube.
- kergonath 2y agoI used to think so, but with more experience a lot of dark patterns and perverse incentives are becoming obvious. These people are not there to explain something interesting in a useful way, they are there to get your eyeballs to extract money from advertising or a Patreon. They are not teaching you, they are making you think they teach you to make you feel satisfied and give them money. Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> Of course some of them are actually good, but a lot are not really. How does the ratio of actually good to not really in the real world compare? It seems pretty amazing that anyone, anywhere can watch a physics lecture from the multiple top professors at any time.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoThere's also Wikipedia. It takes a pretty long time to exhaust that, although I've tried my hardest.
- viktor_von 2y agoAd-free and fast, Wikipedia is imo the best learning resource on-the-go, at home, or at work.
- kqr 2y agoI'm the same. I spend somewhere between 1 and 5 hours on the phone daily, but 80 % of that is writing articles and reading books I don't have on my Kindle.
- jhrmnn 2y agoIndeed. I spent surely a few thousand hours in books as a teenager. Now I spend majority of time on my phone reading short- and long-form non-fiction. “Time on phone” is irrelevant without specifying the activity. Perhaps not if it automatically implies “time on social networks”.
- GeoAtreides 2y agoi'm sure the vast majority of americans spent 2.5 months on their phones reading books, of course, we have nothing to worry about
- swores 2y agoThey very obviously weren't claiming that, they were responding to a specific comment about there being nothing interesting on smartphones. Try to interpret what people say with good faith.
- GeoAtreides 2y agothe subtext of their comment, the unspoken implication, the between the lines meaning was that it's fine people are on their phone all the time, because some of them are reading books
- Dilettante_ 2y agoI didn't read it like that at all.
- GeoAtreides 2y agoobviously I did what do we do now, ask other users for their input? make a poll? i don't know why HN has this habit of using anecdotes as absolute counter-arguments, makes for uninteresting discussion in my opinion and the subtext is always the same "A did/didn't happen to me, so then it follows A does/doesn't happen to anyone"
- Dilettante_ 2y agoActually, you phrased your previous post as though it were a fact, not an opinion, so it's more like "A didn't happen for me, so A does not happen for everyone." I was challenging your assertion, not making a counter-assertion.
- 2y ago
- JKCalhoun 2y agoMuch rather read a book on my laptop. The phone is shitty-internet.
- MattGaiser 2y agoBut at a bus stop, your options are phone or standing around. The immediate area of the bus stop beats a book on your phone? I understand you may want boredom as a practice, but do you genuinely find the bus stop area more interesting?
- 93po 2y agoI think the point is that mindfulness in your present moment, if done intentionally, can be a beneficial practice. There is value in not constantly seeking dopamine hits and allowing your brain to feel discomfort in doing nothing. It's really up to the individual when they choose to do this, though. I don't personally enjoy doing this in public and when having to do stuff like commute or try to get through a work day. But I can respect that others do.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoNo, the bus stop is quite boring — and that's fine. My best ideas come when I am bored.
- dingnuts 2y agoyou'd rather read a novel on your laptop while standing in line at Discount Tire than on your phone? you walk around with your laptop in your back pocket all the time like Eminem or something?
- JKCalhoun 2y agoYeah, no, I don't read while standing in line at Discount Tire. I people-watch.
- bee_rider 2y agoInteresting. Do you actually do that? I agree that phones are not as good in general but I can’t imagine reading a book on a laptop.
- credit_guy 2y agoWe all know that you might also be reading Hacker News.
- heartbreak 2y agoHa! I almost said that to OP who stares off into space while at the bus stop, but hey.
- saagarjha 2y agoLook if I have the option of quietly staring at a suburban nightmare or talking to my friends I know what I am going to pick.
- Forgeties79 2y agoYeah 90% of the time when you’re sitting around waiting you’re not really anywhere interesting.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoThis is the trap they have you in. Of course there is always something "more interesting" on the internet. The interesting creates the adrenaline rush, the adrenaline rush gets you addicted by changing adrenaline receptor density which leads you looking for something even more exciting. Even when you are just looking around IRL, one view will be more interesting than the other, right? But now that got you all doped up on "super interesting" through this teleportation device to all things interesting, everything around you look extremely boring in comparison. As your adrenaline receptors come back to life you will find that everything around you is really actually quite interesting.
- patcon 2y agoThis feels really wise. Thanks
- mieko 2y agoI don't know where you're from, but in the US, the average spot I'd be killing time in is surrounded by acres of parking lots and a busy stroad or two. A Tamagotchi or 1980s pocket calculator is more engaging. Nothing to do with adrenaline, addiction, doom-scrolling, dopamine or chemical receptors. Millions of people are surrounded by a wasteland of asphalt and machines going 60mph with nothing interesting within sight.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
- nunez 2y agoExact same experience at Google in 2015. I remember being super weirded out that seemingly everyone was buried in phones and laptops while walking around the campus. Hated it.
- dugmartin 2y agoWikipedia’s random link is great for learning something new. It is described here as I can’t copy the real link on my phone without it resolving to a new page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random
- averageRoyalty 2y ago> Boredom is a good thing for the brain. I hear this adage repeated a lot, but is it true? A quick kagi finds me lots of news articles quoting neuro-scientists, but no actual studies I can see. If it is, I assume like sleep or vegetables there's a certain amount you should have per day and a point of diminishing returns.
- kqr 2y agoThe years pre-iPhone I was one of the few high-intensity users of WAP. I used it to participate in forums and on IRC from all sorts of places. I guess I sort of saw the social-media-in-your-pocket thing coming a long way before it did.
- Dilettante_ 2y ago>high-intensity users of WAP A very professional way of saying you were getting a lot of play? /j
- grogenaut 2y agoPre palm tro I'd have a book or laptop or newspaper with me everywhere cause it was either that, doing highlights, or reading o magazine at the doctor. Though I learned some great recipes from o magazine. Pre Kindle I'd take around 15 lbs of books with me on trips. There's a joke in knpins about reading the shampoo bottle on the John. I've done that
- seb1204 2y agoYes, Cereal boxes and shampoo bottles, any text would do.
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoMethylchloroisothiazolinone, anyone? I did type it from memory so apologies if I got it wrong. I've read the shampoo bottle way too many times.
- grogenaut 2y agoselsun blue
- throw_pm23 2y agoNo, he was the weirdo. The fact that something is common does not make it normal. If you walked around Hong Kong in the 1880s you'd think you are a weirdo for not smoking opium all day. There will be a similar rude awakening after the current one.
- frereubu 2y agoI would always have a copy of The Economist, New Yorker, NYRB, LRB or similar when I was travelling around London, so avoiding boredom was a priority for me even then. Much more restful to read a physical magazine though, and the only thing to distract me from an article was other articles in the magazine or my surroundings rather than "maybe that comment on Hacker News has a few more upvotes now".
- Ntrails 2y agoA few years back I arrived at a venue sans phone* waiting for a date to arrive. I was early and she was late. It was actually incredible to get the visceral reminder of just how ingrained having my phone for distraction was to me. I didn't take any action but sometimes wonder if I should have. *I had lent my phone to a friend, who was using it to communicate with the person who had found their phone and making recovery/transfer easier... classic?