
How the pursuit of leisure drives internet use - pseudolus
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/06/08/how-the-pursuit-of-leisure-drives-internet-use
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volent
By looking at their map of mobile data cost [0] across the world I understood
something that I find annoying in many apps.

Whenever there's a big file to download/upload the app will not download it
unless I'm connected to a WiFi network. There's often a hidden settings that
can disable this but I never understood why WiFi was considered a better
choice for big file downloads.

Very often my 4G network is faster than the WiFi I have access to and with
100Go of data (for 20€) each month it's basically unlimited.

But from the map 100Go would be $1237 in the US ?

[0]:
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640...](https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-
edition/20190608_FBM986.png)

~~~
Cthulhu_
You sound like you're very young and only joined mobile internet in the past
year, but I'll bite: not long ago pretty much all mobile internet was metered,
that is, you had for example a 1 GB / month rate limit, after which every
100MB would cost you additional money on your already expensive monthly
subscription.

So people were careful with using mobile internet, there were stories about
people who forgot to turn off mobile internet and had to pay hundreds extra,
or people who used a lot of mobile internet by accident abroad, racking up
bills in the thousands. Apps that had bigger downloads would often be on the
arse end of complaints about high data rates, so it became a UX pattern to
warn or disallow big downloads over mobile internet.

4G / higher bandwidth and government legislation (the latter notably in the
EU) finally put a stop on that, only two odd years ago (if that). But, there's
still plenty of countries without 4G, good internet backbones, and who still
do metered connections. Even wired connections, notably in the US which seems
years behind in terms of internet infrastructure in some areas.

~~~
maccard
> You sound like you're very young and only joined mobile internet in the past
> year

There's no reason to make this a personal comment.

Regarding your actual point, I've had a 100GB limit for the past 5 years
(since I got an iPhone 6), with a 4G connection.

Meanwhile Google Amp has existed for less than 3 years and already has
massively widespread adoption. Technological change happens so rapidly that
it's rarely a technical issue when something like this exists.

~~~
megaremote
> Regarding your actual point, I've had a 100GB limit for the past 5 years
> (since I got an iPhone 6), with a 4G connection.

Congratulations. Almost every other person does not.

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nindalf
> Smartphones and social media are, for many in the second half, arenas with a
> semblance of privacy. While Western internet users fret about the privacy
> implications of big tech companies hoarding their data, young internet users
> in the towns and villages of the developing world are delighted to have, for
> the first time, a way to communicate and express themselves away from the
> prying eyes of family, neighbours and other busybodies. In Asia and the
> Middle East smartphones open up a world of romance, enabling people to flirt
> and date despite social constraints.

Couldn't agree more. Privacy is defined by each person based on what they'd
like to do but can't.

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blueyes
You could argue that the pursuit of leisure created Silicon Valley as we know
it. Atari was a gaming company. Apple's founders cut their teeth there. And
the Apple II was largely bought because it supported games. I think this is
one sense of Paul Graham's saying that toy problems are at the origins of
great companies. Creativity driven by the sense of fun.

~~~
davidivadavid
You could argue that the pursuit of leisure created pretty much every business
that ever existed. We create businesses to either deliver leisure, or automate
things that aren't leisure.

~~~
elindbe2
And yet here we are millenia later with people still working full time jobs...

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ptah
distinctive calvinist "work ethic" bias in this article. play is more
important than work to the average person.

~~~
zcid
Leisure is one thing but mindless consumption is another. I worry about the
future of the world's societies as they venture further and further into a
state where consumption of media becomes the ultimate goal of life.

~~~
ehnto
I can definitely recognize in friends and family, the "deep end" of
consumption. Hours upon hours on Facebook or YouTube, consumed entirely in the
most mind-numbing scroll fests until they snap out of it and do something
else. Hours are lost. But I also notice that they have all, on their own
account, decided that it's an issue and then worked to stop it once they
figured it out.

It's not clear to a new user that something as simple as a website could
become addictive and begin to take huge amounts of time, concentration and
patience away from you. Or even that it could be a bad thing. It seems to
catch even disciplined people off guard. But I have noticed that they often
self-regulate eventually anyway.

There does seem to be a certain desire to be productive in many people, and so
I'm not particularly worried about an entire society totally consumed by
social media/entertainment.

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OJFord
> The other, crucial aspect of understanding the second half is that seemingly
> unlikely things can have value. When you call an Indian mobile phone, it is
> not uncommon to hear a song instead of the traditional ringing tone. That
> song, a “caller ring back tone” in the jargon, is chosen by the user you are
> calling, who pays for the privilege. Until the rise of smartphones and
> social networks, caller tunes were a big money-spinner for Indian mobile
> operators, contributing 82bn rupees in revenue in the three years to March
> 2012. All this for music only others would hear.

> The urge driving people to pay a monthly fee for something they do not
> themselves consume is self-expression, which may be a key to coming up with
> new sustainable business models for the low-income internet.

So interesting how seemingly the same technology evolves or gets used
differently around the world.

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natrik
Non paywalled/mirror: [https://outline.com/pCXq5J](https://outline.com/pCXq5J)

Also anyone else find this article annoying to read?

 _The poor do not see it that way. Years of fieldwork across the globe have
led Ms Arora to conclude that when it comes to getting online, “play dominates
work, and leisure overtakes labour.” Where people planning development
strategies imagined, metaphorically at least, Blackberries providing new
efficiencies and productivity, consumers wanted the chat, apps and games of
the iPhone. Worthier uses tend to follow. But they are the cart not the
horse._

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gumby
> Also anyone else find this article annoying to read?

Annoying in what way?

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natrik
The writing is sometimes hard to parse, sentence structure etc.

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gumby
I dunno looks pretty ordinary to me but I’ve been a continuous Economist
reader for 35 years.

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heshiebee
Can’t read the article without subscribing, I guess the economist just got a
whole bunch of new users :)

~~~
zcid
It loaded without issue for me with js and cookies blocked.

