I have never owned a smartphone a day in my life, not because I don't "do" digital technology, but because I get by on a Tracfone and a lightweight 8" tablet that I just hook to the web via hotspot. Just posting about this because every so often, I'll pull out the phone and get this look of shock, like a caveman might have looked back when he saw his first fire, LOL. I find the reaction funny.
shareMY DAD HAS ONE OF THOSE...HE'S A BURNED OUT OLD HIPPIE.
shareLol. You should get an old rotary phone and pull it out of your purse in some public place, hold up the phone cord and ask where you can plug into WiFi.
shareMoonglum9- that is hilarious! My mom had my late grandmother's old black rotary phone. I loved it. Talk about workmanship and "made to last" durability. That thing was a tank. It could've been used as a weapon in a pinch.
I am one of the lone holdouts who doesn't even have a TracFone. I had a cell phone but when it broke, I got rid of my service. I just never used it. I refuse to make personal calls in public. And I hate listening to strangers' phone calls.
I've been considering an inexpensive phone called the Jitterbug just for emergencies. I have to drive almost twenty miles to work, mostly on back country roads.
Smartphones really should be called "Rudephones" or In Your Face phones. I work for a company which supports people with intellectual and/or physical disabilities. The house I am in has three clients. Usually we are single staffed. When my replacements come in, I give them a rundown on what happened that day, things they need to know, etc.
Some of the younger staff have their phones in their hands and immediately start texting (or doing whatever they do on those things). Really, they can't give you their full attention for TWO minutes.
And I am so tired of looking at pictures! Here's my pet, here's my kid, here's my bathroom that I just had remodeled....
There's a woman who walks her dogs the same place I do. We had a storm and a tree limb broke off and damaged her porch. Good to have the photos for insurance purposes. But she showed me all the pictures.
Is there a polite way to say, "I don't give a damn about every bit of minutae in your life. Put the freakin phone away!"
Last week a woman and I were discussing clothes and the dress codes businesses have. She had to wear business casual in college. That was seven years ago and she had pictures of herself on her phone to show me! Guess I'm odd, but I don't carry around pictures of myself.
The late genius George Carlin would have a field day with Smartphones. He did a hilarious riff on camcorders. He talked about seeing a##holes everywhere who HAVE to record every moment of their lives.
"Don't people just experience things anymore?"
He talked about going to homes where they show you all their home movies. He wondered if peoples' lives were so empty that they had to keep looking at things that they had already done. Imagine what he'd say about being forced to look at hundreds of pictures on a tiny screen!!
I've got one of these. I don't really know how to use it but it was cheap.
https://www.bigw.com.au/medias/sys_master/images/images/h7e/h57/11496579825694.jpg
I have a really old Samsung (non smart phone) that I keep for back up.
shareI REFUSE TO HAVE A PHONE...HATE THE WHOLE SHITTY CIRCUS.
shareA 'burner' phone, every time I see somebody with one, I just assume he/she is a drug dealer....or an assassin.
shareas i never get tired of saying, one of the great benefits & privileges of living in the modern world & in a more or less free economy is that we all get to choose what we own and like and it doesn't hurt anyone else just a little bit.
but your thread did remind me of a point andrew mcafee made in his recent book 'more from less' (great read, highly recommended) on all the devices that have collapsed into everyone's smartphone. he looked at a radio shack flyer from 1991 or so, and counted the various gizmos advertised in it. 13 of the 15 items in that flyer have basically vanished and are now on the phone we carry around with us all the time - tape recorder, camcorder, answering machine, clock, etc. so a pile of stuff, not a light pile of stuff either, has gone away.
it's just worth taking a moment to recognize that this is not a trivial achievement - we're richer & have more access to more things while consuming less. & not just less materials. many of the items in that flyer - clock radios for example - are weirdly energy hungry.
so take a moment to say thank you to the smart phone, a bit of a triumph that does more while leaving a bit less of a footprint.
If he's saying in his book that the smartphone has replaced all of these "gadgets" are talking about, then I have no qualms saying that Andrew McAfee has no idea what he's talking about.
None of those items have "gone away." For example, clocks are still sold because they're decorative items, and besides, not everyone has 20/20 vision or the ability to squint at a tiny screen without eye strain. I defy McAfee to walk into any major department, furniture, or hardware store (Target, Home Depot, IKEA, Walmart, etc.) and tell me that they don't have a dedicated clocks section.
Tape recorders aren't as popular anymore because cassettes became obsolete after audio went digital in the 1990s. Once people could download mp3 files off the internet and record their voices via PC, laptop, etc., there was no need to use the cassette format. Has nothing to do with smartphones. And they haven't gone away, either, incidentally. Like with clocks, you can find tape recorders in any major department or electronics store, including Best Buy and Frys.
It's the same thing with camcorders. They're no longer as popular because there are tons of other products now that can record video (doorbell cams, web cams, DSLRs, digital cameras, GoPro, etc.). Again, has nothing to do with smartphones.
So, I don't know about this McAfee guy. He reminds me of my mother, who used to project her way of life/mindset onto the world at large. She thought everyone was like her. For example, if I would go out wearing a backpack, she'd say something, "Nobody uses those anymore." Apparently, he thinks that because he uses his smartphone for everything, everyone does, too.
Clock radios I meant to say, not clocks.
A fair point that the smartphone is not the only product in question, but it is one of the primary drivers.
The point he makes is a good one...that technological advances have in many ways resulted in reduced consumption.
Clock radios I meant to say, not clocks.
The point he makes is a good one...that technological advances have in many ways resulted in reduced consumption.
Ha I admire your passion.
The nice thing about this topic is that we are dealing in measurable things.
I will come back after work with some very fun & interesting facts.
It's not about "passion." It's about countering something that isn't factual.
BTW, while you're mulling things over at work, contemplate this:
Why do you think the statement, "I looked at a Radio Shack flier from 1991" is a logical basis from which to make a case about how smartphones have transformed technology and reduced consumption?
boy are you ever fun to talk to.
would it kill you to be a little polite?
no, i do not think referencing a radio shack flyer is clinching evidence for dematerialization. it is an illustration of how smart phones have replaced once common household items. This is small point in mcafee’s book, certainly not his sole or main point. Smartphones are not the only tech doing this, but they are surely the most commonly used one.
it is the case that some of those radioshack catalogue items are still around. some of them are vanishingly rare. some of them are simply less common. My mom, like lots of old people i’m sure, still has an answering machine. but for many people, most i expect at this point, their phone has replaced all those things. they've replaced radios and cd players & cameras. some people still buy cameras, there are other video recording mechanisms out there, but for many, the smartphone is all of those things. & there are tablets & laptops & some people still use desktops. but more and more, the phone is the main conduit for all of these things, & that is a blessing. it means we are consuming more than ever, often in better quality than ever (i'd argue about music, but leave that aside), on one small device we carry around in our pocket.
some people change their phones every two years. some don't, but some do, and some of those phones end up in landfills. but we have to look at what consumption those phones have replaced; all the vcrs and dvd players and radios and stereos and answering machines and cameras and camcorders that are not part of the household for large swaths of people. and of course, the collapse of physical media: the piles of cassettes and records and dvds and cds that used to take over people's houses are now a niche product. My cds are probably collecting dust in a 2nd hand bi, replaced by a $10 month spotify subscription.
Cds & dvds & blu-rays still exist, & probably will have a market for years to come, but for the most part people consume their music and tv and movies by electrons being transmitted to their phone, and again, this is an incredible gift to all of us. it means we have more media than we've ever had with less impact, less product produced, and lower energy expended.
this is all part of something quite amazing & unprecedented that has happened in the american economy, and i think we can be pretty confident that it's happening in the rest of the rich world: increasing wealth and consumption has become decoupled from material production. this is not solely related to smart phones of course. remarkable achievements have been made in agriculture, resulting in something few people know: increasing return of farmlands to nature. And there has been an increase in efficiency in all forms of manufacturing. But smartphones are absolutely a major contributing factor to that decoupling, and that is a remarkable thing & an incredible blessing to the world. When you have one small hand-held product that substitutes for 13 large, energy hogging (that’s a big one), space and material & money consuming items, that is an achievement we should all be grateful for.
And we can see that in the use of materials in the united states. I wish we could embed graphics on this site, but a link will do here.
https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-5/the-return-of-nature
Go to section 3 of this document, and you will see a graph showing the absolute decline in use of nine basic commodities in the last 30 years. And that’s not in per capita terms either - america is actually using less plastic, less steel, less copper. America has done something seemingly miraculous - a decoupling of material consumption from economic growth.
And if you scroll down, you’ll see that there are many more commodities that have declined in use, and many more that have declined in per capita consumption & are close to also declining absolutely. Even water consumption has flattened & appears to be on the verge of declining.
& this is over a time frame when america has expanded economically and grown in population by 10s of millions. Again, this is a true economic miracle, and we should be very grateful for it.
And smartphones are absolutely part of that story.
I’d encourage you to read the entire article linked to above, and also either read or listen to andrew mcafee’s interview with russ roberts on the econtalk podcast in the link below. It’s a fantastic, really interesting interview, and absolutely worth the time.
https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
FWIW I no longer have a clock radio, camera, answering machine (or even a landline) because of my smartphone. And I doubt I'm alone. Anyway I'll let you get back to your pleasant conversation (isn't making new friends grand!).
PS, you know what else has been rendered obsolete along with those radio shack items? Radio Shack itself! Do they exist anywhere anymore?
absolutely.
funny you should say that - that is almost verbatim what russ roberts said to mcafee in their conversation!
Russ Roberts: And you add to the list: compass, camera, barometer, altimeter, accelerometer, GPS [Global Positioning System]. They are all in my smart phone. Certainly atlases, CDs. And I have one for you that didn't make your list: Radio Shack. Gone.share
Andrew McAfee: Yeah, exactly.
lol I will have to give that a read!
shareit's also streaming on his site as a podcast - so you can either read the transcript or stream it - on your smartphone!
it's a great interview, really interesting & even inspiring.
https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
PS, you know what else has been rendered obsolete along with those radio shack items? Radio Shack itself!
I didn't know but according to Wikipedia: They chose the name "Radio Shack", which was the term for a small, wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment. The Deutschmanns thought the name was appropriate for a store that would supply the needs of radio officers aboard ships, as well as hams (amateur radio operators).
shareRight. It was called "Radio" Shack because it was an electronics store that specialized in radio equipment. That is what it was most famous/known for. It was a store for hardcore radio enthusiasts.
The reason why I'm asking you this is that I don't understand why--given the name of the company--you're mystified by the disappearance of Radio Shack. It struggled to stay afloat in an electronics market dominated by computers and TVs. It tried reinventing itself as an electronics store, but the problem is that it felt weird or silly for people to buy their digital electronics at an "old" chain associated with radios, when they could go to a "snazzy" modern chain store like Best Buy.
When did I saw I was mystified? I simply said it was also obsolete. Honestly I was surprised they were around as long as they were because I always found their items overpriced and the local one in my area was often referred to as "Radio Crap".
shareno, i do not think referencing a radio shack flyer is clinching evidence for dematerialization. it is an illustration of how smart phones have replaced once common household items.
Cds & dvds & blu-rays still exist, & probably will have a market for years to come, but for the most part people consume their music and tv and movies by electrons being transmitted to their phone
it is the case that some of those radioshack catalogue items are still around. some of them are vanishingly rare. some of them are simply less common.
You seem determined to ignore the simple point above that he was making that the items he talks about ARE less common.
Yeah okay you win...it's not possible that when he used the term "vanished" he was speaking colloquially and simply meant they were far less common than they use to be and will continue in that direction (such as digital cameras which are far less common than they use to be since everyone who owns a smartphone has a digital camera on them all the time).
shareindeed.
i guess atomicgirl will willfully ignore an obviously true thing because the language used did not meet her demanded levels of precision.
atomicgirl is the message board police! everybody cheez it!
(or she's just unwilling to concede a glaringly true thing).
either way, i have no idea why she is being so argumentative and rude, but i have no desire to participate. i'm not here to fight with anyone.
so i bid her adieu! adieu! adieu!
Haha see you around the board damosuzuki!
share