> "Requiring a smartphone to exist in society is not inevitable."
Seeing smartphones morph from super neat computer/camera/music players in our pockets to unfiltered digital nicotine is depressing to think about.
Notifications abuse is _entirely_ to blame, IMO.
Every app that you think of when you think of "addictive" apps heavily relies on the notifications funnel (badges, toasts, dings) for engagement. I'm disappointed that we as a society have normalized unabated casino-tier attention grabs from our most personal computing devices.
Growth through free, ad-subsidized tiers also helped create this phenomenon, but that strategy wouldn't be nearly as effective without delivery via notifications.
Big AI (more like LLM/Stable Diffusion as a Service) is going to prey on that to levels never seen before, and I'm definitely not here for it.
Obligatory end-of-post anecdote: My phone stays home most of the time when I work out. I only bring my Apple Watch.
My gym bag has an iPad mini and a BOOX eReader, but I only use the iPad to do Peloton stretches and listen to KEXP Archives, as those can't be done from my watch (though I'm working on something for the latter).
Using this setup has given me a lot of opportunities to soak in my surroundings during rest periods. Most of that is just seeing people glued to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. TV addiction on steroids, in other words.
Thanks to this, people like me who use their phones as tools are forced to carry huge, heavy black slabs because small phones aren't viable and, as market analysis is showing, thin and lightweight slabs won't cut it either.
Yes, and I do that aggressively. But that's an opt-in behavior, and like most things that are opt-in, people can't be bothered, and companies know that.
> "Requiring a smartphone to exist in society is not inevitable."
Seeing smartphones morph from super neat computer/camera/music players in our pockets to unfiltered digital nicotine is depressing to think about.
Notifications abuse is _entirely_ to blame, IMO.
Every app that you think of when you think of "addictive" apps heavily relies on the notifications funnel (badges, toasts, dings) for engagement. I'm disappointed that we as a society have normalized unabated casino-tier attention grabs from our most personal computing devices.
Growth through free, ad-subsidized tiers also helped create this phenomenon, but that strategy wouldn't be nearly as effective without delivery via notifications.
Big AI (more like LLM/Stable Diffusion as a Service) is going to prey on that to levels never seen before, and I'm definitely not here for it.
Obligatory end-of-post anecdote: My phone stays home most of the time when I work out. I only bring my Apple Watch.
My gym bag has an iPad mini and a BOOX eReader, but I only use the iPad to do Peloton stretches and listen to KEXP Archives, as those can't be done from my watch (though I'm working on something for the latter).
Using this setup has given me a lot of opportunities to soak in my surroundings during rest periods. Most of that is just seeing people glued to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. TV addiction on steroids, in other words.
Thanks to this, people like me who use their phones as tools are forced to carry huge, heavy black slabs because small phones aren't viable and, as market analysis is showing, thin and lightweight slabs won't cut it either.