
A Sociology of the Smartphone - anjalik
https://longreads.com/2017/06/13/a-sociology-of-the-smartphone/
======
pavement
Technological advances don't seem to have an undo button, as far as I can
tell. Once a technology of utility is unleashed, things keep advancing and the
genie never goes back into the bottle.

I suppose technology _can_ go backwards, but only by way of generation-
spanning disaster. The fall of Rome is an obvious example. I guess this means
we'll be dealing with this constant technological overload for the rest of our
natural lives, huh?

~~~
mirimir
It won't be long before smartphones are in our heads.

~~~
tritium
Yeah, that's worse, not better.

------
politician
Wouldn't it be a treat if this article were presented to prospective buyers of
smartphones rather than a bland ToS?

Sign right here to strike this Faustian bargain.

(Disclosure: I own and operate a smartphone.)

~~~
throwanem
Is it Faustian? Not to say there aren't tradeoffs, but the metaphor of
damnation I find perhaps excessive.

~~~
politician
The author describes users becoming automatons living lives that are divorced
from each other and motivated by extreme personalization.

Is it excessive?

~~~
throwanem
It's not eternal. People still die, and always will. They are unlikely to
continue using smartphones thereafter.

------
restlessmedia
For all the 'power' these smart phones have given us, it fills me with
confusion, pity and annoyance when I walk in to someone's house only to see
all the inhabitants looking down at their phones. Occasionally, they'll be
engaging on the same content/media, reacting digitally and sometimes (as it's
usually humorous) verbally. I've banned phones at the dinner table (mine only)
and for a future vacation, will set out very clear 'acceptable usage' limits
to my wife. I'd like to think I could give up mine but still a sucker for a
good meme to lift me times are low.

~~~
zemvpferreira
For all the 'equality' civilization has given us, it fills me with confusion,
pity and annoyance when I read someone 'set out acceptable limits' to his
wife. I'd like to think I'm not being generous and you're referring to your
own phone only but I'm not so sure.

------
djsumdog
There's a lot wrong with this article. Do people actually use their phones for
transit? I have transit cards from like 10 cities, and transit cards don't run
out of batteries. Cards/cash don't run out of batteries either, and you can
use them to refill your transit card, and I don't see those getting replaced
any time soon. (Germans still use cash for like everything, which feels weird
in an EU country).

And we still have plenty of phone booths ... if you need to take a piss. I'm
pretty sure that's the only thing they're used for in London. Seriously don't
touch those; they're disgusting.

Do people actually meet legit partners and friends from apps? I've never met
anyone off Tinder (I'm not all that cute really), dating websites are a
wasteland and all the people I've had meaningful relationships I've met at
things I like to do. Sure we have meetups, but they really just facilitate
what we use to do with flyers/posters before. Meeting people still takes work.
No one meets of Internet chat rooms like in the AOL/Seinfeld era. The Facebook
generation of social networks wants you to only connect with people you
already know.

Smart phones, cell phones, affordable laptops, the Internet, television,
radio, magazines, news and print media ...

Every advancement is huge. Every advancement initially supplied free and open
speech. Printing presses pre-civil war were less than $10k USD to setup (in
today's money). Papers crossed the country and spread news and opinions. Large
media, advertising, the pony express (incredibly expensive but necessary for
consolidating news) caused the price of starting a viable news print service
to over $10 million in today money, by the 1930s. Same thing happened to
Radio...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_3WnJ42kw)

Are phones a much bigger revolution than many of the previous ones? Yes. It's
more power than a Pentium4 laptop, in your pocket, and always connected. But
it wasn't unpredictable. Engineers at MIT in the 90s/2000s had bulky wearable
with eye monitors and small hand keyboard (we still haven't see an viable
version of this concept, like the glasses in Back to the Future, except maybe
the Google Glass). Old Sci-Fi books have people typing messages on their wrist
computers.

It's a big deal yes, but a lot of what we see today is "get off my lawn" and
"those dumb [millennials, boombers, gen-x] are so entitled." Adam Conover does
a GREAT commentary on the problem with generation labels:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ)

..and he says that we try to blame the media (radio, televisions, phones) and
all the same things we say about phones today we could see in magazines
applied to TVs decades ago. It's not that media is changing things, it's just
more media.

Look back at videos from the 1960s in big cities. People still didn't talk to
each other on the trams, the subways, the rails .. they had out their
newspapers and their magazines. Jump to the 1980s and the nerdy kids and
adults had their walkmans. Jump to the 90s and everyone had a walkman or
discman (that ate batteries).

Today phones have replaced a lot, but they have added to the ability to be
minimalist. They need to be built to last longer (I would rather keep a phone
for 5 years .. planned or negligent obsolescence is insanely wasteful. Most of
those old walkmans on eBay still work), but I don't think they've changed
things as significantly as the author suggested.

We don't look in at TVs in store front windows to watch the news, but we still
watch sports together in bars. We're still getting news from huge monolithic
sources, but now it's in our hand instead of on the news stand. We no longer
have to wait in a parking lot and be like, "Where is Nick?" "I just called his
house on that payphone. His mom said he left like 30 min ago." "arg I wish
he'd get here. I wanted to start at 9am!" .. we get lost less, we organize
people better, we no longer have to send mail to "general delivery" at a post
office if we don't know someone's address.

We have all this communication, but futurists predicted these types of
advancements would come. The privacy aspects .. yes those are frightening. Yet
it's just an extension of what we were doing in the 80s with the earliest
credit reporting and financial computers (See Adam Curtis's
Hypernormalization).

I don't think articles like this do us a service because they're not
presenting the advancements through a meaningful lens.

~~~
audunw
> There's a lot wrong with this article. Do people actually use their phones
> for transit? I have transit cards from like 10 cities, and transit cards
> don't run out of batteries.

Yes. In Oslo, Norway at least, it's become preferable for many (most?) people.

I used a transit card until the day I stood there about to catch the bus, and
I'd forgotten to renew my monthly ticket. I had the app already, and the bus
driver just let me get on the bus and buy a new monthly ticket on the phone
there.

Since then I've used the phone.

If you've run out of battery, the bus driver will generally let you on (on the
regional buses. inside the city proper they don't check anyway). If there's a
control, the inspectors keep a power bank to let you start the phone to show
that you have a valid ticket.

I guess what's different from many cities here, is that with all the
transportation except regional buses, you don't need to verify a ticket before
boarding. They trust people to buy tickets, and just do regular checks to
discourage cheaters. Since implementing mobile phone tickets, I think the
number of cheaters have gone down a lot.

I suspect that if mobile payment becomes ubiquitous, I may stop bringing my
wallet around. There's not a single thing in my wallet I need anymore (I can
even access the doors at work with the phone, although I do prefer the card so
far), except perhaps ID/drivers license.

~~~
achamayou
In London you can use a contactless card (VISA, Amex...) and there are daily,
weekly and monthly caps after which you automatically travel free. It's much
less painful than having to plan ahead and buy monthly tickets, and I wish it
was the same everywhere.

