6 ms·

Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds

171 points by delaugust 2y ago

gchamonlive 2y ago
Byung-Chul Han in burnout society introduces the concept of hyperattention, which is the kind of attention that seems efficient at first, because it gives the impression of enabling you to multitask, but in reality it robs you from any deep and meaningful connection to anything around you. That's is pretty much what happens with anything tech nowadays. Because we see technology as a pure feat of rationality where in fact what we consume are nothing more than cultural artifacts, which will invariably reflect the fundamental problems of the society in which these artifacts are forged. In our case, in the Burnout Society, it's potentializing hyperattention.
- l33tbro 2y ago
  Is he really saying anything new here with this concept? I've read a few of his books, and I can't think of one original or incisive idea or framework that is genuinely interesting or provocative. Eg, he talks about us today being aspirational subjects in a neoliberal world. I do agree, but this is not exactly illuminating . I don't mean to dump on him, but he's mentioned so often now when subjects like this are brought up.
  - gchamonlive 2y ago
    Maybe he's just not for you. This is actually really unfair to anyone writing philosophy these days. That the dude has to revolutionize the way we think with some deep and original insight otherwise his work is worthless. Is that really the only value taken from philosophy? How about hermeneutics or social communication? I believe Han excels in the latter and is bringing more and more thinkers from different fields to think about the fundamental problems of society, people with technical and scientific backgrounds that would otherwise not join the debate and help design a better society.
    - l33tbro 2y ago
      It's a fair question. I'm not sure that I need to have my mind blown. There's certainly philosophy I read where somebody will be writing broadly about a school of thought or a niche aspect. I think what I find dull about Byung-Chul Han is that he writes with the affect of gusto, but there is no insightful pay-off to match. There's nothing to grab on to, at least for me.
      - popalchemist 2y ago
        IMO this means that your internal "algorithm" is over-trained for novelty. The truth, once discovered, ceases to be new. Does that mean the truth is not worth anything after an initial moment of discovery? Or (this is rhetorical, obviously), is it possible that the things that our mind tells us are worth pursuing/engaging and those things that are ACTUALLY worth pursuing/engaging are not always (or even OFTEN) commensurate?
        9dev 2y ago
        The way I see it, engagement with concepts that you have fully understood is meaningless in that you’ll only marvel at your ability to understand things, rather then come up with a new insight from the engagement. But most of the time, we don’t actually fully understand things, and intimately reflecting on something will often yield new facets, insights you didn’t have before, and deepen your understanding.
        l33tbro 2y ago
        Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. I read all kinds of philosophy (time permitting!) and it certainly doesn't have to be novel. However, when a philosopher adopts a rhetorical tone, I expect there to be some kind of catalyzing payload to justify it. Is that not reasonable? I'd say truth is always being either discovered and recovered, and there's usually not too much difference. There's rarely anything new under the sun.
        facile3232 2y ago
  - imska 2y ago
    If his notion of psychopolitics (as opposed to Foucault's still dominant notion of biopolitics) is nothing new, than what do you consider new? I also remember what he wrote about AI and I have not heard anyone else bring a phenomenological argument forward against the "AI can think" hype.
  - emseetech 2y ago
    Burnout Society came out back in 2010 so maybe it's a Seinfeld Isn't Funny situation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - l33tbro 2y ago
    yes
- -__---____-ZXyw 2y ago
  I (somehow) hadn't came across this fellow. Thanks for mentioning it. In spite of the dismissive nature some of your repliers, I think he looks very interesting, and will be investigating. For anyone else who wants to read a bit about the man, I found this very provocative: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-08/byung-chul-han-the-philosopher-who-lives-life-backwards-we-believe-were-free-but-were-the-sexual-organs-of-capital.html https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-08/byung-chul-han...
tines 2y ago
> The “digital echo” is more than just the awareness of this; it is the cognitive burden of knowing that our actions generate data elsewhere. I don't really feel any burden of this myself, I don't feel weighed down by the data generated by my actions. If someone else wants to clutter up their database with some useless info, that's on them. I mainly feel the "direct" burden of distraction.
- chuckadams 2y ago
  Just came from a thread where people are discussing Foucault’s literal panopticon (Bentham really but Foucault popularized it) and it seems relevant here. Just knowing that someone is watching changes how you behave.
  - ta8645 2y ago
    But that is not always a bad thing, and it might not change how people behave _enough_. This one minute Youtube short, gives an example of a guy dancing, without regard to being watched. And how a large internet crowd reacted to him being shamed by others at the dance. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2rtYzzSgL0 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2rtYzzSgL0 I think we tend to focus on the negative effects of constant surveillance, without giving a nod to the positive once in a while.
  - tines 2y ago
    I guess that's what I'm saying: I don't feel like I'm being watched. I don't feel as though some website recording my clicks is burdensome to me. I leave them to their little games and microoptimizations, and I don't take their bait---I have much more important things going on.
    - saint_fiasco 2y ago
      Have you ever accidentally clicked on a YouTube video and then had your recommended videos turn into pure garbage for a little while? It doesn't have to be a high stakes situation, sometimes small annoyances can add up
    - 2y ago
doright 2y ago
I think there is a more interesting point made by the essay than "digital echoes," which are pretty abstract in comparison to day-to-day distractions that tangibly reduces time. It's that there's a notion of a device that has so many features that it becomes "too useful." There is only so much time you can devote to so many features. Yet it's clear, for example observing the uptick in sci-fi computer interfaces in movies and such at the time, that crossing a threshold of "enough features" at once was useful at a certain point - having a pocket-sized Internet-capable device with a small-format camera that didn't suck for one thing. There was also the essay posted recently that argued for a macOS release focused on bugfixes and stability over the disruption of new features with accompanying issues. I've been wondering for a long time now, at what point will so much innovation have already happened since the 90s-00s that there won't be enough actually useful features to tack on to the next release of X thing except ones that solve problems we didn't have? Has that point already passed? I remember some iDevice releases weren't as notable upgrades as their predecessors for example. In my opinion, if the AI revolution hadn't happened exactly when it did a couple years ago, this problem of diminishing tech returns would have been much more obvious than it is already. In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have otherwise occurred.
- randmeerkat 2y ago
  > In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have otherwise occurred. We’ve been running on the remnants of research from the 50s - 70s for awhile now. Businesses have slow rolled the tech as long as they could, but the truth is, we’re at the end of the research that’s been accomplished. Given that and the exodus of researchers to go do things like optimize ads, I think the tech landscape will be fairly flat for the foreseeable future. Humans sailed for thousands of years before the steamship was realized. Our level of advancement over the past 100 years has been impressive, and there’s a lot we can do with it, if we don’t wipe ourselves out, but I expect this to be humanity’s current limit for the foreseeable future. I believe the next big breakthrough that is needed to realize a technical breakthrough is a societal one. We need to value education, research, and stop fighting with one another over every single thing that exists. Whatever form of society that looks like, will be when humanity finally breaks free of its limits.
degun 2y ago
I wonder if this is why BlackBerry phones (best ones ever made) went extinct. Because the media used to grab attention more aggressively, images and short videos essentially, are better experienced on a bigger screen. That's why there are no more iPhone minis. It's either convenient for Big Tech to keep us engaged to that type of media, or just simply user preference. Guess I'll never know, but I do miss smaller phones, and especially a physical keyboard.
- jgust 2y ago
  I've never been able to type on a touch screen as efficiently as my blackberry 9000 keyboard. RIP
- footlose_3815 2y ago
  >That's why there are no more iPhone minis. I think the minis have a 5.4" screen, meanwhile the SE has a 4.7" screen. I own and prefer an SE. >I do miss smaller phones, and especially a physical keyboard. There's these "Clicks" but it's a rubber slip case that has an extended keyboard at the bottom. They're pretty hideous. I also wanted a physical keyboard, so I waited and found on EBay a Moguls Mobile iPhone 6 Keyboard case, which actually fit the SE after I dremeled-out the camera hole a little! My rose tinted glasses were a bit strong though, because swype is faster than thumb physical qwerty. I fondly miss when HTC was making innovative devices, when everything was up in the air. I had the G1, a mytouch4g slide, A Samsung Galaxy S relay. All QWERTY slider phones and all amazing experiences.
  - smu3l 2y ago
    The last SE had a smaller screen but the actual device was larger than the last mini (13 mini). Both are discontinued now, sadly. The 16e is the smallest phone in the current lineup, which is bigger than both. I really like the 13 mini, I had been on Android since since maybe iphone 4. Not sure what I'll do when my current phone dies, I don't like having a big phone in my pocket.
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  > a device that has so many features that it becomes "too useful." I don't think it is the features, it is that too much information comes into the phone and then distracts us, because the senders of the information really want to you to listen to them. If a "feature" is useful it is good to have it available when you NEED it. Consider the feature "flashlight" on my phone. It's great to have it when you need it. Or Clock. And Alarm. And Timer. I use them all the time.
stevenAthompson 2y ago
The author is largely correct, and I've personally been doing something similar to him for the last few year: purchasing physical media, shunning unnecessary smart gizmos that I don't directly control, and otherwise trying to just be disconnected for a period of time each day. Each time I find some small anachronistic way to be offline a little more I can feel myself relax just a bit. A well lived life is not an exercise in optimization, but our phones lead us to live that way. So, I think I'm done looking for the best way to do things for awhile, and I'm going to focus on finding the most enjoyable way to do them.
- jgust 2y ago
  Have you tried putting your phone in "grayscale" mode? Works wonders for turning your smartphone back into a "tool" instead of a "toy".
  - icedchai 2y ago
    Disabling or dialing back notifications for various apps also helps a bunch. I'm fine with a Slack popup notification, but I don't want a sound or vibration.
    - BeetleB 2y ago
      On Android I used to have an app that would just kill most notifications. If you got a notification, the app would put its own notification on the bar, and not turn the light on or ping you. So even if I got 3 text messages, 2 missed calls, and other random notifications, the bar would show only one notification, and I would not get a sound/light. You'd have to click on it to see the actual notifications you missed. You could, of course, have whitelists to let certain notifications through. Best. App. Ever. It's great to be able to work or do whatever for hours, knowing that your phone can't interrupt you (unless someone calls, which they rarely do). Sadly stopped working after some Android update. I'm sure there are similar apps, though.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
mentalgear 2y ago
See also: "How Phone Use Alters the Formation of Memories and Makes Time Pass Faster". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZi0fUocGyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZi0fUocGyo
tamad 2y ago
> It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. I know I’m not alone, and yet this product will not be made. See the Light Phone III released this week.
- pmg101 2y ago
  Thanks for the tip, I went to investigate. I like everything about it except for the lack of third party messaging. I need to meet my friends where they are and that is on Signal or WhatsApp. Maps is also non negotiable, having maps in your pocket is one of the true wins of a smartphone imo, giving you freedom to explore.
  - tamad 2y ago
    No problem. 3rd party messaging does seem like the biggest need being voiced by potential users right now. It does have a navigation app, by the way, but don’t know details yet.
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  It does less but costs the same as those devices that do more. I'll go with practicing self discipline, thanks.
HellDunkel 2y ago
I agree to a lot of this. But there is something even more disturbing than the constant surveillance. With the rise of AI we can no longer be sure if what we devote our attention to is an artefact of culture or just some derivative that has been automatically created to keep our attention up. And we ultimately have to ask ourselfs what the hell are we doing here? If history is removed from the artefact it becomes meaningless but how do we evaluate that and what is the consequence? Live music and theatre plays instead of movies and video games?
garyrob 2y ago
> The penultimate “smartcar” drives itself. Er... the second-to-last one?
- c22 2y ago
  The ultimate smart car doesn't drive, it just advises you to take the bus.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    I bet there are billions of people no where near a bus. I'm one of them.
    - c22 2y ago
      Thank you for the update.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
divan 2y ago
> It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. RayBan Meta glasses is quite close to it, seriously.
- divan 2y ago
  Also just saw Light Phone announcement yesterday: https://www.thelightphone.com https://www.thelightphone.com
makeitdouble 2y ago
The "digital echoes" naming is perhaps the most attracting part of this piece. It's interesting that there is no parallel drawn to the more bland and every effects of our actions, the non digital echoes, where buying corn soup at the supermarket generates data on which brand sold what to who (in particular if it was paid by credit card or with a loyalty number attached). Or how public service attendency is usually tracked in very rough numbers, so going or not to your local library has rippling effects. Or how choosing to bike instead of driving at a place will impact one's town urban policies etc. We' be always been part of an ecosystem, and our mere presence has effects on it. Caring too much about it will becomes an unsurmountable source of stress, and I feel that's where kids getting a natural sense of it earlier on probably avoids these kind of very late waking up to reality.
ronbenton 2y ago
A dumb phone with good camera, texting, etc seems like a good product idea. Has it been done?
- netsharc 2y ago
  I feel like it would suffer feature-creep. Personally I'd want WhatsApp and Google Maps. And if you want to deal with QR codes that redirect you to a restaurant menu or ticket ordering portal (I was visiting a country once, it had a long queue for visas on arrival, but it also had a QR code where I could get said visa online), it would need to have a web browser, well there you go, a portal to distraction has been opened. And then there's a need to have the payment app for the WeChat-esque "Scan QR code to pay" payment system that exists where I live...
  - ronbenton 2y ago
    Yes this is what I was thinking too. Everyone’s “must have” features will be different. Once we add them all, we’ll be looking at an iPhone.
    - getnormality 2y ago
      So what we really need is good parental controls. This will benefit not only parents but also adults who need to parent themselves sometimes.
      - ronbenton 2y ago
        I actually do have some websites blocked on my iphone using the "block adult websites" feature
- tamad 2y ago
  Good camera is relative, but Light Phone III that launched this week seems to fit this bill.
keybored 2y ago
Digital information has affordances. One of them is potential infinite permanence. You put something out there and it can be perfectly replicated forever. In a conversation you have the ear witnesses and just multiple levels of hearsay after that. Not so for data. So now you are one copy-paste from leaking your diary to the Wayback Machine.[1] Everyone talks about this affordance in how it makes things better. People also talk about how digital information is easy to leak. But few seem to talk about it as a direct and irrevocable burden. Smartphones can do everything. So now you have to put in a lot of effort for it to do less. For smartphones though it is less inherent. You can make software that limits it so that a million people don’t have to go through the same procedure. We could make a real concerted effort towards that, as a society. But not right now. Because companies won’t make money from less attention or less things bothering people and whatever else. So we can’t do it as a society. Because there is no business model and that is what dictates what the projects that ultimately impacts normal people should be taken on.[2] But there will be projects though. There will be at least a dozen projets on GitHub that only software enthusiasts will use. We could make a better world if we put our minds to it. A better world for normal people as well. [1] Eight years from now some bot is going to connect this sentiment I’ve shared here, find similar sentiments from other accounts, cross-reference them with other similarities, and then maybe ultimately find out who I “really am”. [2] Instead we can bicker about the usual anti-consumer topics. They chose this. They bought the smartphones. Huh, if people really cared they would have bought a dumbphone. What, they need a smartphone for work? To use their bank? Then they would have bought a dumbphone as well for their analog (relatively speaking) weekends.
nextts 2y ago
A testiment to how broken it all is is trying to set up oncall on my phone. There is a tug of war whereby I want most things to be silenced at night DnD. Even phone calls could be scammers and spammers But I want the alert and only that alert to wake me. A dumber phone in a simpler time would make this easy. Just leave it on full volume and call my number!
- jedimastert 2y ago
  I had this problem as well. "Luckily" for me, the Android work profile on my phone seems to bypass do not disturb settings.
  - nextts 2y ago
    Mine does but it won't override silent mode. So I just need to make sure I am not silent before going to sleep. But getting this to work to that extent wasn't trivial and require a phone call. An app from a different device profile can't pierce it.
    - jedimastert 2y ago
      Also "thankfully" our on call system (Pagerduty) can be configured to call you if you don't answer the notification quickly enough
- djoldman 2y ago
  Is this a situation where you are trying to set up a work app on your personal phone? If so, does your employer offer employer-owned phones?
4b11b4 2y ago
I have been feeling this for some time. I think it is covered tangentially here https://www.nateliason.com/blog/de-atomization-is-the-secret-to-happiness https://www.nateliason.com/blog/de-atomization-is-the-secret... by the term "atomization"
- c54 2y ago
  You may enjoy the book Atomized by Michel Houellebecq, he coined the term in the late 90's in a similar vein of what Nate is referencing in his post.
viveknathani_ 2y ago
"interfaces that respect attention rather than constantly competing for it" - beautiful!
j1elo 2y ago
> I hope to see operating systems truly designed around focus rather than multitasking, interfaces that respect attention rather than constantly competing for it I wish disabling automatic focus changes was a consistently available feature. I'd want that emergent windows, pop-ups, dialogs, or newly opened applications that had been loading in the background, are NEVER able to steal the windows focus. It's been an instinctive rejection since a child; opening an app that takes some time to load, and during those seconds, keep writing some text in a notepad, only to end up with half phrase mistakenly written onto the program that finally loaded and stole the windows focus. I've always despised that behavior, really. Yeah, I'm fast in my interactions with my machines.
weard_beard 2y ago
I think a large part of the problem is the debate I'm seeing here: There are a very few people trying to engage with and process the philosophy in their own terms, but most people are discussing how to weigh and measure the author and how they would do things differently for their own self interest. Our voices online are disconnected echos of our own basest selves. In real life, over a glass of wine I think most of the conversation here would be, naturally, more empathic and questioning and interactive. Our digital shadows are very poor representations of our better selves, but they are and will continue to be used to measure us with each echo and each measurement straying farther from who we are, and who we were.

171 points by delaugust 2y ago

Byung-Chul Han in burnout society introduces the concept of hyperattention, which is the kind of attention that seems efficient at first, because it gives the impression of enabling you to multitask, but in reality it robs you from any deep and meaningful connection to anything around you. That's is pretty much what happens with anything tech nowadays. Because we see technology as a pure feat of rationality where in fact what we consume are nothing more than cultural artifacts, which will invariably reflect the fundamental problems of the society in which these artifacts are forged. In our case, in the Burnout Society, it's potentializing hyperattention.

l33tbro 2y ago
Is he really saying anything new here with this concept? I've read a few of his books, and I can't think of one original or incisive idea or framework that is genuinely interesting or provocative. Eg, he talks about us today being aspirational subjects in a neoliberal world. I do agree, but this is not exactly illuminating . I don't mean to dump on him, but he's mentioned so often now when subjects like this are brought up.
- gchamonlive 2y ago
  Maybe he's just not for you. This is actually really unfair to anyone writing philosophy these days. That the dude has to revolutionize the way we think with some deep and original insight otherwise his work is worthless. Is that really the only value taken from philosophy? How about hermeneutics or social communication? I believe Han excels in the latter and is bringing more and more thinkers from different fields to think about the fundamental problems of society, people with technical and scientific backgrounds that would otherwise not join the debate and help design a better society.
  - l33tbro 2y ago
    It's a fair question. I'm not sure that I need to have my mind blown. There's certainly philosophy I read where somebody will be writing broadly about a school of thought or a niche aspect. I think what I find dull about Byung-Chul Han is that he writes with the affect of gusto, but there is no insightful pay-off to match. There's nothing to grab on to, at least for me.
    - popalchemist 2y ago
      IMO this means that your internal "algorithm" is over-trained for novelty. The truth, once discovered, ceases to be new. Does that mean the truth is not worth anything after an initial moment of discovery? Or (this is rhetorical, obviously), is it possible that the things that our mind tells us are worth pursuing/engaging and those things that are ACTUALLY worth pursuing/engaging are not always (or even OFTEN) commensurate?
      - 9dev 2y ago
        The way I see it, engagement with concepts that you have fully understood is meaningless in that you’ll only marvel at your ability to understand things, rather then come up with a new insight from the engagement. But most of the time, we don’t actually fully understand things, and intimately reflecting on something will often yield new facets, insights you didn’t have before, and deepen your understanding.
      - l33tbro 2y ago
        Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. I read all kinds of philosophy (time permitting!) and it certainly doesn't have to be novel. However, when a philosopher adopts a rhetorical tone, I expect there to be some kind of catalyzing payload to justify it. Is that not reasonable? I'd say truth is always being either discovered and recovered, and there's usually not too much difference. There's rarely anything new under the sun.
        facile3232 2y ago
- imska 2y ago
  If his notion of psychopolitics (as opposed to Foucault's still dominant notion of biopolitics) is nothing new, than what do you consider new? I also remember what he wrote about AI and I have not heard anyone else bring a phenomenological argument forward against the "AI can think" hype.
- emseetech 2y ago
  Burnout Society came out back in 2010 so maybe it's a Seinfeld Isn't Funny situation.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- l33tbro 2y ago
  yes
-__---____-ZXyw 2y ago
I (somehow) hadn't came across this fellow. Thanks for mentioning it. In spite of the dismissive nature some of your repliers, I think he looks very interesting, and will be investigating. For anyone else who wants to read a bit about the man, I found this very provocative: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-08/byung-chul-han-the-philosopher-who-lives-life-backwards-we-believe-were-free-but-were-the-sexual-organs-of-capital.html https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-08/byung-chul-han...

tines 2y ago

> The “digital echo” is more than just the awareness of this; it is the cognitive burden of knowing that our actions generate data elsewhere. I don't really feel any burden of this myself, I don't feel weighed down by the data generated by my actions. If someone else wants to clutter up their database with some useless info, that's on them. I mainly feel the "direct" burden of distraction.

chuckadams 2y ago
Just came from a thread where people are discussing Foucault’s literal panopticon (Bentham really but Foucault popularized it) and it seems relevant here. Just knowing that someone is watching changes how you behave.
- ta8645 2y ago
  But that is not always a bad thing, and it might not change how people behave _enough_. This one minute Youtube short, gives an example of a guy dancing, without regard to being watched. And how a large internet crowd reacted to him being shamed by others at the dance. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2rtYzzSgL0 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2rtYzzSgL0 I think we tend to focus on the negative effects of constant surveillance, without giving a nod to the positive once in a while.
- tines 2y ago
  I guess that's what I'm saying: I don't feel like I'm being watched. I don't feel as though some website recording my clicks is burdensome to me. I leave them to their little games and microoptimizations, and I don't take their bait---I have much more important things going on.
  - saint_fiasco 2y ago
    Have you ever accidentally clicked on a YouTube video and then had your recommended videos turn into pure garbage for a little while? It doesn't have to be a high stakes situation, sometimes small annoyances can add up
  - 2y ago

doright 2y ago

I think there is a more interesting point made by the essay than "digital echoes," which are pretty abstract in comparison to day-to-day distractions that tangibly reduces time. It's that there's a notion of a device that has so many features that it becomes "too useful." There is only so much time you can devote to so many features. Yet it's clear, for example observing the uptick in sci-fi computer interfaces in movies and such at the time, that crossing a threshold of "enough features" at once was useful at a certain point - having a pocket-sized Internet-capable device with a small-format camera that didn't suck for one thing. There was also the essay posted recently that argued for a macOS release focused on bugfixes and stability over the disruption of new features with accompanying issues. I've been wondering for a long time now, at what point will so much innovation have already happened since the 90s-00s that there won't be enough actually useful features to tack on to the next release of X thing except ones that solve problems we didn't have? Has that point already passed? I remember some iDevice releases weren't as notable upgrades as their predecessors for example. In my opinion, if the AI revolution hadn't happened exactly when it did a couple years ago, this problem of diminishing tech returns would have been much more obvious than it is already. In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have otherwise occurred.

randmeerkat 2y ago
> In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have otherwise occurred. We’ve been running on the remnants of research from the 50s - 70s for awhile now. Businesses have slow rolled the tech as long as they could, but the truth is, we’re at the end of the research that’s been accomplished. Given that and the exodus of researchers to go do things like optimize ads, I think the tech landscape will be fairly flat for the foreseeable future. Humans sailed for thousands of years before the steamship was realized. Our level of advancement over the past 100 years has been impressive, and there’s a lot we can do with it, if we don’t wipe ourselves out, but I expect this to be humanity’s current limit for the foreseeable future. I believe the next big breakthrough that is needed to realize a technical breakthrough is a societal one. We need to value education, research, and stop fighting with one another over every single thing that exists. Whatever form of society that looks like, will be when humanity finally breaks free of its limits.

degun 2y ago

I wonder if this is why BlackBerry phones (best ones ever made) went extinct. Because the media used to grab attention more aggressively, images and short videos essentially, are better experienced on a bigger screen. That's why there are no more iPhone minis. It's either convenient for Big Tech to keep us engaged to that type of media, or just simply user preference. Guess I'll never know, but I do miss smaller phones, and especially a physical keyboard.

jgust 2y ago
I've never been able to type on a touch screen as efficiently as my blackberry 9000 keyboard. RIP
footlose_3815 2y ago
>That's why there are no more iPhone minis. I think the minis have a 5.4" screen, meanwhile the SE has a 4.7" screen. I own and prefer an SE. >I do miss smaller phones, and especially a physical keyboard. There's these "Clicks" but it's a rubber slip case that has an extended keyboard at the bottom. They're pretty hideous. I also wanted a physical keyboard, so I waited and found on EBay a Moguls Mobile iPhone 6 Keyboard case, which actually fit the SE after I dremeled-out the camera hole a little! My rose tinted glasses were a bit strong though, because swype is faster than thumb physical qwerty. I fondly miss when HTC was making innovative devices, when everything was up in the air. I had the G1, a mytouch4g slide, A Samsung Galaxy S relay. All QWERTY slider phones and all amazing experiences.
- smu3l 2y ago
  The last SE had a smaller screen but the actual device was larger than the last mini (13 mini). Both are discontinued now, sadly. The 16e is the smallest phone in the current lineup, which is bigger than both. I really like the 13 mini, I had been on Android since since maybe iphone 4. Not sure what I'll do when my current phone dies, I don't like having a big phone in my pocket.
galaxyLogic 2y ago
> a device that has so many features that it becomes "too useful." I don't think it is the features, it is that too much information comes into the phone and then distracts us, because the senders of the information really want to you to listen to them. If a "feature" is useful it is good to have it available when you NEED it. Consider the feature "flashlight" on my phone. It's great to have it when you need it. Or Clock. And Alarm. And Timer. I use them all the time.

stevenAthompson 2y ago

The author is largely correct, and I've personally been doing something similar to him for the last few year: purchasing physical media, shunning unnecessary smart gizmos that I don't directly control, and otherwise trying to just be disconnected for a period of time each day. Each time I find some small anachronistic way to be offline a little more I can feel myself relax just a bit. A well lived life is not an exercise in optimization, but our phones lead us to live that way. So, I think I'm done looking for the best way to do things for awhile, and I'm going to focus on finding the most enjoyable way to do them.

jgust 2y ago
Have you tried putting your phone in "grayscale" mode? Works wonders for turning your smartphone back into a "tool" instead of a "toy".
- icedchai 2y ago
  Disabling or dialing back notifications for various apps also helps a bunch. I'm fine with a Slack popup notification, but I don't want a sound or vibration.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    On Android I used to have an app that would just kill most notifications. If you got a notification, the app would put its own notification on the bar, and not turn the light on or ping you. So even if I got 3 text messages, 2 missed calls, and other random notifications, the bar would show only one notification, and I would not get a sound/light. You'd have to click on it to see the actual notifications you missed. You could, of course, have whitelists to let certain notifications through. Best. App. Ever. It's great to be able to work or do whatever for hours, knowing that your phone can't interrupt you (unless someone calls, which they rarely do). Sadly stopped working after some Android update. I'm sure there are similar apps, though.
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mentalgear 2y ago

See also: "How Phone Use Alters the Formation of Memories and Makes Time Pass Faster". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZi0fUocGyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZi0fUocGyo

tamad 2y ago

> It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. I know I’m not alone, and yet this product will not be made. See the Light Phone III released this week.

pmg101 2y ago
Thanks for the tip, I went to investigate. I like everything about it except for the lack of third party messaging. I need to meet my friends where they are and that is on Signal or WhatsApp. Maps is also non negotiable, having maps in your pocket is one of the true wins of a smartphone imo, giving you freedom to explore.
- tamad 2y ago
  No problem. 3rd party messaging does seem like the biggest need being voiced by potential users right now. It does have a navigation app, by the way, but don’t know details yet.
handfuloflight 2y ago
It does less but costs the same as those devices that do more. I'll go with practicing self discipline, thanks.

HellDunkel 2y ago

I agree to a lot of this. But there is something even more disturbing than the constant surveillance. With the rise of AI we can no longer be sure if what we devote our attention to is an artefact of culture or just some derivative that has been automatically created to keep our attention up. And we ultimately have to ask ourselfs what the hell are we doing here? If history is removed from the artefact it becomes meaningless but how do we evaluate that and what is the consequence? Live music and theatre plays instead of movies and video games?

garyrob 2y ago

> The penultimate “smartcar” drives itself. Er... the second-to-last one?

c22 2y ago
The ultimate smart car doesn't drive, it just advises you to take the bus.
- genewitch 2y ago
  I bet there are billions of people no where near a bus. I'm one of them.
  - c22 2y ago
    Thank you for the update.

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divan 2y ago

> It turns out I don’t want a phone at all, but a camera that texts — and ideally one smaller than anything on the market now. RayBan Meta glasses is quite close to it, seriously.

divan 2y ago
Also just saw Light Phone announcement yesterday: https://www.thelightphone.com https://www.thelightphone.com

makeitdouble 2y ago

The "digital echoes" naming is perhaps the most attracting part of this piece. It's interesting that there is no parallel drawn to the more bland and every effects of our actions, the non digital echoes, where buying corn soup at the supermarket generates data on which brand sold what to who (in particular if it was paid by credit card or with a loyalty number attached). Or how public service attendency is usually tracked in very rough numbers, so going or not to your local library has rippling effects. Or how choosing to bike instead of driving at a place will impact one's town urban policies etc. We' be always been part of an ecosystem, and our mere presence has effects on it. Caring too much about it will becomes an unsurmountable source of stress, and I feel that's where kids getting a natural sense of it earlier on probably avoids these kind of very late waking up to reality.

ronbenton 2y ago

A dumb phone with good camera, texting, etc seems like a good product idea. Has it been done?

netsharc 2y ago
I feel like it would suffer feature-creep. Personally I'd want WhatsApp and Google Maps. And if you want to deal with QR codes that redirect you to a restaurant menu or ticket ordering portal (I was visiting a country once, it had a long queue for visas on arrival, but it also had a QR code where I could get said visa online), it would need to have a web browser, well there you go, a portal to distraction has been opened. And then there's a need to have the payment app for the WeChat-esque "Scan QR code to pay" payment system that exists where I live...
- ronbenton 2y ago
  Yes this is what I was thinking too. Everyone’s “must have” features will be different. Once we add them all, we’ll be looking at an iPhone.
  - getnormality 2y ago
    So what we really need is good parental controls. This will benefit not only parents but also adults who need to parent themselves sometimes.
    - ronbenton 2y ago
      I actually do have some websites blocked on my iphone using the "block adult websites" feature
tamad 2y ago
Good camera is relative, but Light Phone III that launched this week seems to fit this bill.

keybored 2y ago

Digital information has affordances. One of them is potential infinite permanence. You put something out there and it can be perfectly replicated forever. In a conversation you have the ear witnesses and just multiple levels of hearsay after that. Not so for data. So now you are one copy-paste from leaking your diary to the Wayback Machine.[1] Everyone talks about this affordance in how it makes things better. People also talk about how digital information is easy to leak. But few seem to talk about it as a direct and irrevocable burden. Smartphones can do everything. So now you have to put in a lot of effort for it to do less. For smartphones though it is less inherent. You can make software that limits it so that a million people don’t have to go through the same procedure. We could make a real concerted effort towards that, as a society. But not right now. Because companies won’t make money from less attention or less things bothering people and whatever else. So we can’t do it as a society. Because there is no business model and that is what dictates what the projects that ultimately impacts normal people should be taken on.[2] But there will be projects though. There will be at least a dozen projets on GitHub that only software enthusiasts will use. We could make a better world if we put our minds to it. A better world for normal people as well. [1] Eight years from now some bot is going to connect this sentiment I’ve shared here, find similar sentiments from other accounts, cross-reference them with other similarities, and then maybe ultimately find out who I “really am”. [2] Instead we can bicker about the usual anti-consumer topics. They chose this. They bought the smartphones. Huh, if people really cared they would have bought a dumbphone. What, they need a smartphone for work? To use their bank? Then they would have bought a dumbphone as well for their analog (relatively speaking) weekends.

nextts 2y ago

A testiment to how broken it all is is trying to set up oncall on my phone. There is a tug of war whereby I want most things to be silenced at night DnD. Even phone calls could be scammers and spammers But I want the alert and only that alert to wake me. A dumber phone in a simpler time would make this easy. Just leave it on full volume and call my number!

jedimastert 2y ago
I had this problem as well. "Luckily" for me, the Android work profile on my phone seems to bypass do not disturb settings.
- nextts 2y ago
  Mine does but it won't override silent mode. So I just need to make sure I am not silent before going to sleep. But getting this to work to that extent wasn't trivial and require a phone call. An app from a different device profile can't pierce it.
  - jedimastert 2y ago
    Also "thankfully" our on call system (Pagerduty) can be configured to call you if you don't answer the notification quickly enough
djoldman 2y ago
Is this a situation where you are trying to set up a work app on your personal phone? If so, does your employer offer employer-owned phones?

4b11b4 2y ago

I have been feeling this for some time. I think it is covered tangentially here https://www.nateliason.com/blog/de-atomization-is-the-secret-to-happiness https://www.nateliason.com/blog/de-atomization-is-the-secret... by the term "atomization"

c54 2y ago
You may enjoy the book Atomized by Michel Houellebecq, he coined the term in the late 90's in a similar vein of what Nate is referencing in his post.

viveknathani_ 2y ago

"interfaces that respect attention rather than constantly competing for it" - beautiful!

j1elo 2y ago

> I hope to see operating systems truly designed around focus rather than multitasking, interfaces that respect attention rather than constantly competing for it I wish disabling automatic focus changes was a consistently available feature. I'd want that emergent windows, pop-ups, dialogs, or newly opened applications that had been loading in the background, are NEVER able to steal the windows focus. It's been an instinctive rejection since a child; opening an app that takes some time to load, and during those seconds, keep writing some text in a notepad, only to end up with half phrase mistakenly written onto the program that finally loaded and stole the windows focus. I've always despised that behavior, really. Yeah, I'm fast in my interactions with my machines.

weard_beard 2y ago

I think a large part of the problem is the debate I'm seeing here: There are a very few people trying to engage with and process the philosophy in their own terms, but most people are discussing how to weigh and measure the author and how they would do things differently for their own self interest. Our voices online are disconnected echos of our own basest selves. In real life, over a glass of wine I think most of the conversation here would be, naturally, more empathic and questioning and interactive. Our digital shadows are very poor representations of our better selves, but they are and will continue to be used to measure us with each echo and each measurement straying farther from who we are, and who we were.