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Can You Live Without Your Smart Phone? Would You Want To?
This stems from a PIT thought. How much do you really need your smart phone? How much has it supplanted other devices, activities, or things in your life? Would you be willing to give it up, either mostly or entirely? Do you want to give it up? What is it that you use it for?
With China and its vicious police state, endless and inescapable facial recognition, and concentration camps, maybe it is time we re-examine our own willing feeding of “the cloud.” How much do we do that’s really even necessary on our phones, or is their convenience so very much of an improvement that they’re a necessity? Do we have too much connected online already?
Several things have happened of late that have had me thinking perhaps it’s time to unwind the gadgetry, and put the phone away. Two years ago I bought an Apple Watch. Yet during those two years I cannot say I got much use out of the thing except as a watch. Its motion tracking never seemed to track, something I noticed the other night after a four-mile walk. The apps available for it were universally uninteresting to me, and otherwise the thing was a perpetual nag. Only useful thing it did was Apple Pay, but few places I go take that even now. So I dug out my old Seiko and that was that. At least I never paid full price for it, which was why I gave it a try.
Last week our TV died. It was a circa 2009 Mitsubishi 60″ HDTV, and it was dumb. We shopped for a replacement and found that all screens now are “smart”, with operating systems made mostly by Google or Roku, and they all spy on you to some degree. Nearly every set out there, assuming you connect it to the internet, will take pixel captures (often as 1 per second, of enough pixels to fingerprint exactly what you have on) of everything on the screen (not just what you’re streaming, but even DVDs or video games), and the set makers then trade and sell that data even to streaming services you’ve not subscribed to (Netflix and Amazon are massive purchasers of your watching habits). See here and here. Plus they have always-on microphones, and sometimes even cameras, doubtless capturing even more. Oh, and you can program your set (which is already spying on you) to control your smart-home stuff too. We opted not to replace the screen at all.
Lastly, we started tracking our own phone usage. It was horrifying, the number of times of day we picked up the things, and the hours we spent in front of them were astounding. That led us to strip games and social media off the things, along with other stuff we just fiddled with out of boredom. There are some things like email and banking that work or other things make necessary, but aside from podcasts and occasional texting, and some navigation when traveling, there just is not a lot I need the thing for. I’m debating refurbing my old iPod 5 (needs a new battery) and using that for podcasts.
Before I got my first iPhone, my prior cell phones were all just phones. And they stayed mostly in the car. Could I go entirely back to that? Maybe not entirely, given business obligations. But partially? Mostly? Maybe, just maybe.
So what do you use your smartphone to do? Do you want it to do even more? Or would you rather be shot of the thing entirely?
I use mine largely to read blogs and Ricochet. If I didn’t have a smartphone, I wouldn’t read them and I’d be back to dragging a book everywhere I go.
I also play games with my entire family on it, but that’s largely something I can give up, too.
I’m a phone junkie. It’s always in my hand, like I’m an addict or something, yet I am happy to forget it at home. I watched a soccer game and had dinner with my kids without missing it at all.
Perhaps the only thing on my phone that has made an appreciable difference in my life is the app Keep Notes which is like having a searchable bulletin board in my pocket. I keep everything in it, from Christmas lists and grocery lists to workout and diet regimens to minecraft coordinates.
We find it very handy but expensive. Mine just died and I had to buy a new one after about only a half decade. We need to watch China and how it uses the technology, then design around those risks and take the market away from them.
When ever my kids ask me when they can get a phone, I tell them that I didn’t get my first phone until I was 35, and if that was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them.
You Luddites! You still using your Princess phones?
Mine was black, which made it a Trimline, not a Princess. But I did have that at least a decade past when everyone else had gone to TouchTone.
We cut the cord last year, but there is still a working dial phone hanging in the kitchen (but the line is dead). I just can’t part with it.
I got one, but it doesn’t work. I can’t figure out where the crank is.
No, not that crank. I know where that one is. I mean the one you turn to get the attention of the operator, so she can listen in and retweet your call around town, saving you the trouble. It’s a labor-saving technology.
We thought it was a pretty big deal when we got our first private line.
We still have a landline. Possibly the most expensive in the country in terms of the features available versus our monthly bill (Taylorstown, PA).
When we moved out here in 1986, “Goldie” in Taylorstown was still sticking the little plug into the little socket when someone wanted to make a call.
Although the phone company at the time (something like “Chesapeake and Ohio,” but perhaps, actually, that was the railroad) assured us that it wasn’t a party line. All I know is that if anyone on the “Ridge” tried to make a phone call, and someone else had forgotten to hang up their phone properly, it wouldn’t go through. Go figure.
Since then, the phone company has been bought out several times, with, among others, GTE, Contel, and most recently, Verizon, taking their share out of our hides, while promising us the world.
I think that little rural areas like ours get passed around, for as long as there’s some spiff to be gained by the “buyer.” Once that runs its course, we get sold again. Or so it seems to me. (Don’t get me started.)
The only reason I can’t “lose” the landline is that Mr. She has a pacemaker/defibrillator implant that requires a landline phone to “call home” several times a week and upload his readings. The highly-sophisticated, medically-bleeding-edge vendor that makes his implant can’t cope with WiFi and/or cellular Internet connection, apparently.
This sounds dumb, but I’m guessing that those here who are still supporting business apps that don’t work with anything beyond Windows 7 will understand . . .
Yes. I have two of them.
I never liked them because I thought they were unstable.
Though we mostly use our cells, we, too, have a landline. (It’s mostly for family.) No frills, local calls only, $20/month. We use a phone card for long distance. (Long since memorized.) When it gets below a certain level, my credit cards tops it off. Easy-Peezy!
The phones or the Princesses? As Judge said, technically, they are Trimline phones, but close enough. They plug into the wall.
Meh.
I use mine for phone calls, map apps, and listening to podcasts.
There are no phones (or any other wireless devices) allowed in my workplace. So in the lobby and peripheral entryways, they have those little birdboxes where people store their phones during the duty day.
When, on occasion, I leave for lunch, I see a bunch of “kids” clustered around the outside of the door checking their phones.
I leave mine in my car, and usually don’t even check it at the end of the day. Which means I don’t get the text that the lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo sent telling me to pick up product X on the way home. Which means I get to go back out.
Yeah, but one of those map apps can direct the full force and fury of the nearest air asset.
I want one of those.
That’s on the job. Mission phones are essential pieces of equipment (which one doesn’t carry day-to-day). I was talking about “real life” off duty.
Whatever that is.
Quick update, I’ve now identified five separate books. Yeah, I don’t remember how many I put on there, and going back and checking just doesn’t seem as fun.