I've always said we peaked at the technology level of the late 90s. We had everything we needed, and none of the BS; cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, SMS, file sharing, blogs, forums, and broadband internet were all widespread at that point. Everything since has just been layers of monetized, corporate controlled, walled garden crap that has objectively ruined society and turned the techno-utopian dreams we had then into a dystopic Orwellian nightmare.
I wonder if a community will form around this philosophy, and we'll end up with a new kind of Amish. Like in the year 2200, there's a group of people called the Seinfeldians who refused to use any technology introduced after 1998
I might be the outlier here: but I think we had everything we needed BEFORE cell phones and SMS (or more specifically before cell phones were common). Sure, it's nice in an emergency to have a phone anywhere you are, but in a society where you can be reached 24/7 there's a sense of urgency all the time. I struggle to even describe the difference because it's been so long since I've felt that sense of calm that comes with: hey guys, I'm going to X, I'll be back at dinner - and nobody expecting to hear from me until dinner.
I'm sure there are a privileged few that will say you just need to shut your phone off, but for most of us that's not an option. On a vacation? Sure. Outside of that, good luck.
Video calls? Skype initial release was in 2003. Consumer OS with server-grade kernel? Windows XP first release was in 2008. USB thumb drives? Windows 98 didn't have drivers for them, so they came bundles with CD with drivers? Web browsers? Firefox initial release was in 2002, much hated IE6 - in 2001. In 90s you had IE5 - I doubt it was much better than IE6.
In the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith explains that the Matrix is designed after the peak of human civilization, which just so happens to be the late 90s.
I definitely don't need 24/7 access to news and social media, but I still really appreciate the ability to access the internet "on the go." If my destination changes, I can look up new directions. If my friend and I are making plans to meet up again later, I can check an up-to-date weather forecast.
This was an ability I actively longed for as a child growing up in the 2000s (I'm 26 for perspective). I bought that special web browser for my Nintendo DS, but it was useless away from a wifi hotspot. (And it was slow as heck.)
>> I've always said we peaked at the technology level of the late 90s.
I like having Wi-fi and Bluetooth and these didn't become popular until sometime around 2004. In 99, most people would still use ethernet cables and floppy disks.
And corporate controlled, walled gardens have existed even before the commercial net. Online service providers (like Compuserve and AOL) were a huge market until the Dotcom bust.
I tend to disagree: spending the last 4 months in lockdown would have been really hard for me, but playing Table Tennis in VR with my home 3D printed paddle made things so much better.
Here's a story: I use a Blackberry 10 device, have for the past 6 years. So I'm half in/half out of smartphone ownership. I can browse websites in the browser (the web's made this much harder to do of recent) but apps are out of the question.
I was extolling the virtues of my ways to a friend on a business trip to Denver. I have everything I need, nothing I don't. I can call, text, browse some sites. I have balance, I have minimalism, I have peace.
Then we decided to take a bus trip to Boulder. When we arrived at the station, there was no teller, and you had to install an app to buy a ticket. I sheepishly asked him to buy my ticket, and I paid him back in cash (no Venmo for BB10), and felt like a thorough and proper asshole.
I ditched all my social media after being a lifelong user.
The biggest noticeable change for me is I suddenly forgot most of these random 'online' friends and don't think about them at all anymore! If I'm not willing to pick up the phone or text somebody, I don't interact with them - that's it.
I find I have more boredom, which is a good thing. I was quite bored as a kid and had to make do with my own devices. So I've been reading more, I even picked up some hobby programming outside of my job which I haven't done in years!
The only place I still comment is actually hacker news!
1986-1992: BBS's, newsgroups
1992-today: IRC, NNTP, and IM clients
There existed ways to be social long before FaceBook/IG/Reddit/et al. were around. And if you squint you can even see the skeleton of those other platforms in the things you use today.
If I were to live today like I did in 1999:
My (online) social groups were a close knit family of people that shared similar interests. Half of whom lived on the other side of the planet. I typed with them daily, and had close relationships.
Everything I see on Facebook/IG is vapid, and meaningless. Nothing but fakeness and trying to impress strangers.
FFS 1999 is post 'Eternal September'.
Had the article been dated 1979 I might have tolerance for this intentional ignorance.
As a millennial (25), I disagree with the notion that all of Facebook and Instagram are vapid and meaningless. To me, that just shows that you're not curating your feeds in a manner that highlights what good remains on the platforms.
The problem to me is not that people are less willing to participate, but that the platforms have consumed all meaningful discussion. I'm a part of some fantastic niche groups on Facebook, follow insightful people on Twitter, and read many fantastic subreddits. I've led book clubs, played board games, and developed deep, meaningful relationships via these platforms. They problem is they have been consumed in the monolith of likes and cat pictures, and pulling the value out is growing more difficult. It's a matter of continually chopping back the vines (cutting /r/funny and /r/worldnews out of reddit, deleting friends you don't care about and unliking fan pages on Facebook).
My internet social groups are still the same as yours are. We just have different mediums through which we communicate.
You're doing it all wrong. What I also don't like is the lack of sharing. When I see people taking photos of me with a selfie, I always say "I'm on your side". But when I take an Instagram photo, everyone who saw the photo sees "this poor guy". I don't give a fuck about it. I just want to share my awesome adventures together with people I love. The whole point of the Instagram was just that it is easier. We can see each other and share our experience!
Hey boomer, or whatever generation you wish you were born into:
>Everything I see on Facebook/IG is vapid, and meaningless.
Maybe you should stop following vapid and meaningless people then? When I do go on instagram I see custom made guitars, people playing cool guitar riffs, drum stuff, and so on. Facebook is used for local neighborhood news and motorcycle groups.
The "When phones had wires, humans were free" idea ignores that back in the day when the phone rang, you'd stop whatever you were doing and answer it. There was no Caller ID, no voice mail. You picked up the phone not knowing if this was an important work call, a social call from a friend or relative, or somebody trying to sell you something. Yes, a mobile phone means you can be contacted anywhere, but on the flip side you are free to ignore it, safe in knowing that you'll miss nothing of importance. People will leave a message, or at least you can see who called.
That reminded me of an interview [1] with Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men:
> "A lot of the most important things in my life have happened to me over the phone," he said, remember that before texting and voicemails, "It's a dramatic situation almost every time when you answer the phone — if you answer the phone."
I remember a one-man-show of 1998 where the comic pretends he “succeeded to start cigarette” and how stylish he became. In the middle of the scene he says: “Before starting? I used to go to dates, and when the person was late, I was waiting like this, on the street, arms pending, didn’t know what to do with my hands. NOW I SMOKE!”
Joke aside, it highlights that people used to wait a lot. “Meet me at 6 at the library” meant that you might be on the wrong side of the library, you’ll try the other entrance and the person does the opposite, using another path, so you don’t meet, and you don’t know whether they had to cancel. We did far fewer things because anything took a lot of time.
Movies were much slower too. Watch Gremlins again, an action movie: It’s so slow! (Counter example: Die Hard is correctly fast-paced for an action movie). To summarize, qualities you’d require would be reliability in appointments and being able to wait a lot without getting bored.
We could even make the case that it is now possible to fill loneliness with a mobile phone, whereas it drove more than one into dementia pre-iPhone.
Raises some interesting points, then replaces the smart phone with more devices.
Sure, solved the privacy issue by essentially cutting the network cord. But needing a special watch+GPS to navigate?
I was hoping he was all in and would revert to paper maps.
I remember, being new in town, plotting my destination on a paper map before setting out — but recording the instructions ("Turn left on El Camino..." into one of those small digital recorders (think 1995) so I could drive without having to consult the map.
That's about the level of tech I was expecting.
Myself, I would prefer to live like it's "79. The CB radio was sort of peak technology as far as I'm concerned.
> A trick I’ve developed, when giving my contact info to new people, is to enter my phone number on their smartphone myself, and install Signal for them.
don't... do that. don't install stuff on anyone's phone unless they've told you to.
Social media used to be fun 10 years ago. Twitter was a fun place with fun people when I started using it in 2009. Now social media has turned into a platform for misinformation, contrarians, and ‘gotcha’ folks.
Even though he's just advertising a newsletter. He's right. Make friends in real life, meet partners via your social life. Don't waste time hopping on Facebook to envy people you don't even know.
A big part of my maturing was to stop comparing myself. Everyone starts at a different place, and everyone is at a different place. Someone who say dealt with homelessness as a teenager can be happy to rent half a room at 22. he or she doesn't have to compare themselves to a Facebook new grad with a 200k TC offer.
I agree with no Social Media, but not having a Smartphone seems really too much.
My cell phone allows me to instantly communicate with my family members, know their exact whereabouts, monitor my home security and energy usage etc. Using it for super helpful driving directions (Waze or gmaps) and decidedly 21st century technologies like Instacart have been game changers. When I'm dropped (pre-covid) into another country, my service (tmobile) just "works" and often times my phone is preconfigured for the local transit system app (or just "works", due to NFC e.g. Suica in JP or Oystercard in London). Not to mention all the online and offline media (Netflix etc) that is almost endless these days.
I would never go back to the bad old days of T9 Nokias by comparison.
I'm not a fan of social media, annoying notifications or interruptions and have them mostly turned off. If someone 'really' wants to interrupt, they can call. That's fine.
I don't have any Social Media apps installed on my phone. I access them only from a browser running on my laptop. Not having the apps always with me everywhere I go has improved my privacy and prevents mindless engagement. This has been working very well for me.
A lot of the things he figured change doesn't seemed to be an effect of social media, rather the social groups he belonged to.
I'm not on most of the platform he described, and are barely reachable on the ones that are, have almost no friend group that chats constantly. I still happily use a smartphone for a lot of things, no 'hey if you want to communicate to me you'll have to install this new app'. Sounds like exporting the problem to someone else whereas one can just wean off the addictive part of those apps without actually deleting them.
The problem with opting out of these things is just how much our modern society relies on them, in very practical ways.
There's a local business (great croissants) that closes on random days (the owner is French) and the only place they publish that information is Instagram. You walk to the store and there's no note, nothing on their website, no-one answering the phone, but on Instagram they've been warning their customers for days.
I just got a haircut and after the cut was done he told me their credit card processor was down so I had to pay via venmo or whatever. I could have paid in cash I suppose, but I didn't have cash or a cheque. I assumed that he could take a credit card and he assumed I could pay via Venmo.
The old world was not built on the same assumptions. 7-11 clerks had maps and phone books to lend because people got lost. I had a 'tab' at the local video-rental store! Newspapers published movie times and TV schedules. You had scheduled recurring meet-ups with friends and met new people at cafes. You actually talked to strangers. Those things, the societal support infrastructure needed to live a life without a smart phone, are slowly disappearing. We are building a society based on the assumption that EVERYONE has a smartphone. And to some extent these online services.
I suspect that this is what people object to -- not having a choice. I get it, but the world waits for no one.
But the great thing is that each of us gets to decide. Netflix still has a DVD service! Vinyl record sales are up! Print newspapers and magazines are still a thing! There are still libraries! You can still get landline phones! You can have a smartphone that you leave off unless you want to make a call! Not all of the old world is gone yet, you can integrate the old world with the new.
>We’ve reached a dangerous level in society where people are afraid of human interaction, refusing a phone call because it makes them interact more humanly and with less control.
>Texting gives you more reflection on what you’re gonna say than a real and instant conversation
That's..not the conclusion I would have pulled from that. Seems far more likely people prefer to text over call because texting allows them to continue on with their day while calling requires them to give up a certain amount of time and interrupts what they're currently doing.
Millennials are supposedly very phone-shy (something I can anecdotally confirm) yet I've never seen anyone barring the pandemic I don't think they're any less likely to engage in in-person human interaction, which doesn't fit this conclusion about phones. Long phone calls, especially over cell phones due to comfort and latency issues, are uncomfortable.
I deleted my Facebook a decade ago and just recently got a message on LinkedIn from an old friend from high school. I guess he still runs into my mom sometimes but he was always afraid to ask her about me because he thought I might, "be in jail or something". Wow dude hopefully you don't always go 0-100 like that. Nah, I have a beautiful wife, 3 kids, and a fulfilling career building software. I don't need to stroke my ego any more than I already do. Nobody does. We had a meaningful exchange of emails and that was the end of it. To be honest I'd ditch the smart phone too if it wasn't for how useful google photos is, not to mention maps when you're on vacation. Frankly I miss i9. Writing text messages without looking at the phone. Imagine how great it would be these days with the guessing algorithms.
I've never had a facebook account and sometimes I wonder what people think. Most of my friends just take it as me being [imitates Kramer] out there. But I suppose it is possible that there are people from my past that might think I'm dead or something.
I use my phone for phone calls and banking apps - if necessary. For work is email, slack and Kanboard on my own Linode instance. There is nothing I miss about social networks. Nothing.
Less distractions. Less emotional impact from the network. Last year deleted my Linkedin profile. Replaced Google with Duck and Bing. Gmail is only for junk. Avoiding Amazon where is possible. Don't plan to buy new shit from Apple either. After my current computer dies I am moving to Linux/KDE and plan to never look back. Never felt so calm and clear-minded. Highly recommend the FAANG detox.
> They all had my phone number, email address and other ways of contacting me. However, none of them did. It was like I had exited the matrix, and was living in another reality.
Definitely experienced this. People didn't think I was dead, but they had this weird mental block where, at least at first, they couldn't think of how to contact me except on social media. They did eventually figure it out.
Something I'd really like to try, should the right product ever come along, is going smartwatch-only. No smartphone.
Most of the things that I really need a phone for, I should be able to do from a watch. Making calls and listening to music shouldn't be a problem, and voice dictation is sufficient for short messages. Anything longer and more in-depth can and should wait until I'm at a computer.
[+] [-] aphextron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodoldneon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw04|5 years ago|reply
I'm sure there are a privileged few that will say you just need to shut your phone off, but for most of us that's not an option. On a vacation? Sure. Outside of that, good luck.
[+] [-] icedchai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lex-2008|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cherrycherry98|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hh3k0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|5 years ago|reply
The 1890s was a good time! Surprised an Amish posted on HN.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|5 years ago|reply
This was an ability I actively longed for as a child growing up in the 2000s (I'm 26 for perspective). I bought that special web browser for my Nintendo DS, but it was useless away from a wifi hotspot. (And it was slow as heck.)
[+] [-] Dracophoenix|5 years ago|reply
I like having Wi-fi and Bluetooth and these didn't become popular until sometime around 2004. In 99, most people would still use ethernet cables and floppy disks.
And corporate controlled, walled gardens have existed even before the commercial net. Online service providers (like Compuserve and AOL) were a huge market until the Dotcom bust.
[+] [-] ricardobayes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hattmall|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totalZero|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroonetwothree|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partingshots|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuball63|5 years ago|reply
I was extolling the virtues of my ways to a friend on a business trip to Denver. I have everything I need, nothing I don't. I can call, text, browse some sites. I have balance, I have minimalism, I have peace.
Then we decided to take a bus trip to Boulder. When we arrived at the station, there was no teller, and you had to install an app to buy a ticket. I sheepishly asked him to buy my ticket, and I paid him back in cash (no Venmo for BB10), and felt like a thorough and proper asshole.
I still have my BB10 phone.
[+] [-] calvinmorrison|5 years ago|reply
The biggest noticeable change for me is I suddenly forgot most of these random 'online' friends and don't think about them at all anymore! If I'm not willing to pick up the phone or text somebody, I don't interact with them - that's it.
I find I have more boredom, which is a good thing. I was quite bored as a kid and had to make do with my own devices. So I've been reading more, I even picked up some hobby programming outside of my job which I haven't done in years!
The only place I still comment is actually hacker news!
[+] [-] UI_at_80x24|5 years ago|reply
A world existed before you came around.
There existed ways to be social long before FaceBook/IG/Reddit/et al. were around. And if you squint you can even see the skeleton of those other platforms in the things you use today.If I were to live today like I did in 1999: My (online) social groups were a close knit family of people that shared similar interests. Half of whom lived on the other side of the planet. I typed with them daily, and had close relationships.
Everything I see on Facebook/IG is vapid, and meaningless. Nothing but fakeness and trying to impress strangers.
FFS 1999 is post 'Eternal September'. Had the article been dated 1979 I might have tolerance for this intentional ignorance.
[+] [-] srndsnd|5 years ago|reply
The problem to me is not that people are less willing to participate, but that the platforms have consumed all meaningful discussion. I'm a part of some fantastic niche groups on Facebook, follow insightful people on Twitter, and read many fantastic subreddits. I've led book clubs, played board games, and developed deep, meaningful relationships via these platforms. They problem is they have been consumed in the monolith of likes and cat pictures, and pulling the value out is growing more difficult. It's a matter of continually chopping back the vines (cutting /r/funny and /r/worldnews out of reddit, deleting friends you don't care about and unliking fan pages on Facebook).
My internet social groups are still the same as yours are. We just have different mediums through which we communicate.
[+] [-] tp3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pid_0|5 years ago|reply
>Everything I see on Facebook/IG is vapid, and meaningless.
Maybe you should stop following vapid and meaningless people then? When I do go on instagram I see custom made guitars, people playing cool guitar riffs, drum stuff, and so on. Facebook is used for local neighborhood news and motorcycle groups.
Its as if.... you control what you see!
[+] [-] fingerlocks|5 years ago|reply
The oldest millennials are in their 40s now. Gen X’ers are all gray haired and half are retired. Most boomers are dead.
Edit: wrong letter.
[+] [-] jhbadger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snakeboy|5 years ago|reply
> "A lot of the most important things in my life have happened to me over the phone," he said, remember that before texting and voicemails, "It's a dramatic situation almost every time when you answer the phone — if you answer the phone."
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mad-men-series-finale... (spoiler alert: interview is about the series finale)
[+] [-] laurent92|5 years ago|reply
Joke aside, it highlights that people used to wait a lot. “Meet me at 6 at the library” meant that you might be on the wrong side of the library, you’ll try the other entrance and the person does the opposite, using another path, so you don’t meet, and you don’t know whether they had to cancel. We did far fewer things because anything took a lot of time.
Movies were much slower too. Watch Gremlins again, an action movie: It’s so slow! (Counter example: Die Hard is correctly fast-paced for an action movie). To summarize, qualities you’d require would be reliability in appointments and being able to wait a lot without getting bored.
We could even make the case that it is now possible to fill loneliness with a mobile phone, whereas it drove more than one into dementia pre-iPhone.
[+] [-] rthomas6|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|5 years ago|reply
Sure, solved the privacy issue by essentially cutting the network cord. But needing a special watch+GPS to navigate?
I was hoping he was all in and would revert to paper maps.
I remember, being new in town, plotting my destination on a paper map before setting out — but recording the instructions ("Turn left on El Camino..." into one of those small digital recorders (think 1995) so I could drive without having to consult the map.
That's about the level of tech I was expecting.
Myself, I would prefer to live like it's "79. The CB radio was sort of peak technology as far as I'm concerned.
[+] [-] miguelmurca|5 years ago|reply
don't... do that. don't install stuff on anyone's phone unless they've told you to.
[+] [-] TameAntelope|5 years ago|reply
It's kind of ironic how little respect for someone else's privacy this behavior exhibits, considering the intent.
[+] [-] wittyreference|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguelmota|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguelmota|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroonetwothree|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] offtop5|5 years ago|reply
A big part of my maturing was to stop comparing myself. Everyone starts at a different place, and everyone is at a different place. Someone who say dealt with homelessness as a teenager can be happy to rent half a room at 22. he or she doesn't have to compare themselves to a Facebook new grad with a 200k TC offer.
[+] [-] ctime|5 years ago|reply
My cell phone allows me to instantly communicate with my family members, know their exact whereabouts, monitor my home security and energy usage etc. Using it for super helpful driving directions (Waze or gmaps) and decidedly 21st century technologies like Instacart have been game changers. When I'm dropped (pre-covid) into another country, my service (tmobile) just "works" and often times my phone is preconfigured for the local transit system app (or just "works", due to NFC e.g. Suica in JP or Oystercard in London). Not to mention all the online and offline media (Netflix etc) that is almost endless these days.
I would never go back to the bad old days of T9 Nokias by comparison.
I'm not a fan of social media, annoying notifications or interruptions and have them mostly turned off. If someone 'really' wants to interrupt, they can call. That's fine.
[+] [-] taylodl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aperocky|5 years ago|reply
I'm not on most of the platform he described, and are barely reachable on the ones that are, have almost no friend group that chats constantly. I still happily use a smartphone for a lot of things, no 'hey if you want to communicate to me you'll have to install this new app'. Sounds like exporting the problem to someone else whereas one can just wean off the addictive part of those apps without actually deleting them.
[+] [-] olivertaylor|5 years ago|reply
There's a local business (great croissants) that closes on random days (the owner is French) and the only place they publish that information is Instagram. You walk to the store and there's no note, nothing on their website, no-one answering the phone, but on Instagram they've been warning their customers for days.
I just got a haircut and after the cut was done he told me their credit card processor was down so I had to pay via venmo or whatever. I could have paid in cash I suppose, but I didn't have cash or a cheque. I assumed that he could take a credit card and he assumed I could pay via Venmo.
The old world was not built on the same assumptions. 7-11 clerks had maps and phone books to lend because people got lost. I had a 'tab' at the local video-rental store! Newspapers published movie times and TV schedules. You had scheduled recurring meet-ups with friends and met new people at cafes. You actually talked to strangers. Those things, the societal support infrastructure needed to live a life without a smart phone, are slowly disappearing. We are building a society based on the assumption that EVERYONE has a smartphone. And to some extent these online services.
I suspect that this is what people object to -- not having a choice. I get it, but the world waits for no one.
But the great thing is that each of us gets to decide. Netflix still has a DVD service! Vinyl record sales are up! Print newspapers and magazines are still a thing! There are still libraries! You can still get landline phones! You can have a smartphone that you leave off unless you want to make a call! Not all of the old world is gone yet, you can integrate the old world with the new.
[+] [-] stryan|5 years ago|reply
>Texting gives you more reflection on what you’re gonna say than a real and instant conversation
That's..not the conclusion I would have pulled from that. Seems far more likely people prefer to text over call because texting allows them to continue on with their day while calling requires them to give up a certain amount of time and interrupts what they're currently doing.
Millennials are supposedly very phone-shy (something I can anecdotally confirm) yet I've never seen anyone barring the pandemic I don't think they're any less likely to engage in in-person human interaction, which doesn't fit this conclusion about phones. Long phone calls, especially over cell phones due to comfort and latency issues, are uncomfortable.
[+] [-] ManBlanket|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] decafbad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nbzso|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodoldneon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rthomas6|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karaterobot|5 years ago|reply
Definitely experienced this. People didn't think I was dead, but they had this weird mental block where, at least at first, they couldn't think of how to contact me except on social media. They did eventually figure it out.
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|5 years ago|reply
Most of the things that I really need a phone for, I should be able to do from a watch. Making calls and listening to music shouldn't be a problem, and voice dictation is sufficient for short messages. Anything longer and more in-depth can and should wait until I'm at a computer.
[+] [-] wackget|5 years ago|reply
Uh... absolutely not.