Life without a cellphone

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Frugalchicos
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Life without a cellphone

Post by Frugalchicos »

Hi All,

I was trying to find a topic about it and couldn't find it. Anyways, any of you has gone without using a cellphone at all? I know Jacob didn't have one. However, I wonder if he is still happily living without one or finally succumb to it and bought one.

I fantasize with the idea of going cellphone free when I retire and move back to The Basque Country. These are my questions to you guys:

What are the biggest benefits of living without a cellphone?
Biggest drawbacks of not having a cellphone?
Do you feel you are missing out on anything?
How do you stay in touch with friends or family?
Do you feel you will be left out from social gatherings because you're "harder" to reach?

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Jean
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Jean »

I had no service for 2 month, thé main drawback isn't social, but administrative. Payin bill requires 2phases id, doing your taxes, calling any govt service, etc... Thé main advantage is that you enjoy your surroundings much better when only them can save your from temporary boredom.
I think that a prepaid cellphone which is mostly left at home is a good compromise. There used to bé landlines for that, but a cellphone is cheaper an cand recieve SMS.

slsdly
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by slsdly »

Depends on what you mean. I have a 2014-era phone with LineageOS and I use VoIP (voip.ms) on it as my phone line. Works when I am in WiFi. Battery life is excellent compared to the old cordless headsets I had before. Plus bluetooth headset. I don't really spend much time looking at it besides the odd call. I also filter all of my calls in advance, so only businesses I put on my allowlist can ring it. Everyone else goes straight to voicemail.

I don't miss it. My friends use email if they want to reach me (30s). I only had a phone for work before. I am not left out of social gatherings -- perhaps because I seem to organize them.

ducknald_don
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by ducknald_don »

They have become too useful for me to give up. Mine is a replacement for a traditional phone, sat nav, camera, calculator, todo list, pedometer, TV, radio and clock. I use it to manage my bank accounts for business and home, currency exchange, business email when I'm away, logging on to sites with 2FA and paying for parking. Government services in the UK like the NHS are increasingly managed through apps.

What I don't do is use it for Twitter/Facebook, I abandoned those platforms as soon as they started to commercialise them. Funnily enough I don't often use it as a phone either.

To me it's a lot of value for a small price.

IlliniDave
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by IlliniDave »

I didn't get my first cell phone until ~2009 when in my mid-40s. Every one I've had, including my present one, flips open and is not an effective internet interface. Works for calling and texting.

I've spent time off grid, but not extended time.

Never having had a "real" cell phone I can't compare/contrast.

I've found living without a PC in my pocket very doable. Sometimes things just have to wait until I get a chance to get back to the computer. Since I predate the internet much less all that phone app stuff, just being able set aside a few minutes at home on the pc to do things that for most of my life required reaching people by phone, snail mail correspondence, driving/walking around to do things in person, and all manner of Neanderthal behavior; is still an amazing convenience.

It's a bit lonely in the sense that more than once at a social gathering or establishment I'll literally be the only person there not playing around with their phones. So I miss a lot of the look-at-screen camaraderie. ;) I don't bring it with me to run errands (exception during covid: for my haircuts and hauling dog to the vet I needed it to receive the all-clear-to-come-in communique). At work it stays in my satchel where on the typical day it get checked once at lunch break and once before heading home. At home It spends the vast majority of its time sitting on the same kitchen counter the old land line phone sat on.

Like I was saying, I remember when simple answering machines were nonexistent. Having stretches of time where I cannot be interrupted by a phone is reminiscent of a freer, more peaceful time. Very anachronistic of me. I think for younger folks who have been immersed in connectivity for basically their whole lives shedding it would be really difficult.

I'd suggest trying it for a period of time, like maybe a whole day. It's fundamentally convenience at the price of distraction as I see it. Apparently I am wired to accept some inconvenience to avoid distraction which appears to put me in a small minority. Even all the flip phone diehards among my friends and family have found resistance to the Borg futile and "upgraded". The exception is my dad. He has an unused flip phone cell in his house. But I'd bet it'd take him at least 30 minutes to find it.

ertyu
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by ertyu »

IlliniDave wrote:
Mon Jun 21, 2021 5:59 am
So I miss a lot of the look-at-screen camaraderie. ;)
you can ask your friends who are poking on their phones to show you any interesting memes they find. this way, they can poke for something they think is fun, get to share it with you, and you get to feel included.

jacob
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by jacob »

Biggest issues are the hassle of two-factor verification and having to print out QR codes in advance for tickets and check-ins. In particular as counters get increasingly replaced with self-service which pretty much expects you to have a smartphone. Ditto government and other services (banking) that get replaced with apps. Since 95% (or whatever) now use smartphones this means that the alternative is often a poorly constructed backup solution to deal with the luddites. It's no longer "here's a brochure" or "go to this website" but rather "download the app".

However, you only need one phone per household to deal with this.

This, however, depends very much on the degree of technological adoption in a given country.

As for not being able to socialize by smartphone I consider that a bonus although this might be more Gen-X speaking. I do occasionally feel like a dinosaur. A few months ago I had to look up what a "DM group" was :-P In regards to being fully wired up to the point that I'm developing the appropriate brain structures to handle "constant life on the phone", I'm definitely on the B-team---and I'm seriously considering joining the C- or D-team ala Mark Boyle.

AmazingRadish
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by AmazingRadish »

Great question. I have gone without a cellphone multiple times, either due to breakage, lack of service in a rural area, or as a reaction to plain sensory overload. But I always come back due to efficiency (GPS, QR codes, texting, etc.).

I never felt I was missing out but it is harder for others to include you in social gatherings spontaneously if that is their communication type. If someone in the group has to remember to email you an invite after everyone else has discussed or agreed over text it becomes a chore and you are inadvertently left out sometimes.

With that said, if you've never gone without a cellphone I recommend giving it a try. Once you disengage then you can truly see what is driving your usage.

Quadalupe
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Quadalupe »

So if you want to pareto this problem, you can buy a cheap smartphone for the two-factor (don't forget to export your two-factor things and take a picture of the export QR code). The other stuff (texting, calling, google maps) can be substituted by clearly communicated alternatives or planning ahead.

There are also Android emulator for computers. I haven't tried them myself, but maybe some of the 'necessary' bank apps etcetera work on those.

Frugalchicos
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Frugalchicos »

I think IlliniDave nailed it with "Having stretches of time where I cannot be interrupted by a phone is reminiscent of a freer, more peaceful time"

I guess the perfect compromise is having an older smartphone and use it mainly for all those apps that are kind of mandatory. Currently I have a brand new iphone for work that I barely use (most of my communication is via email or Teams).

Going around without a smart phone in the near future might be a utopia...

ducknald_don
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by ducknald_don »

Or just turn off notifications.

Frugalchicos
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Frugalchicos »

@ducknald_don

I don't think it is about the notifications. A phone is a distraction that you look from within just looking at anything on the browser, any other app you might have, the time which leads to 10 minutes spent catching up with messages, looking at pics, etc. It is not my case, but people are addicted to their phones, they scroll mindlessly without being present. Turning off notifications might help but not cure.

I believe that sometimes too much technology...it is just too much technology that we are better off being a dinosaur like Jacob (using his own expression). At least, we are able to go for a stroll, hop on a bus and keep a conversation with friends without a phone in front of our faces. My point was that perhaps we were more free when we were not carrying a mini laptop in our pockets. However, average life is being designed assuming we all have a smartphone (therefore, we need one if we want to access to our bank account, investments, etc...)

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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by jacob »

The way I see it is that smartphones or rather the apps occupy brain space when they become more than just a tool. What I mean is questions like "how does this affect my social life" insofar much (30+ mins a day?) my social life consists of liking people's facebook posts, worrying about getting my posts liked, or increasingly communicating in way that is almost indistinguishable from a gpt-3 bot given the format's heavy use of autocorrect, emojis, and "posts" that are <25 words long. Just like there's a "google brain" (where one forgets the details of everything because "one can easily look it up"), there's also "app"-brain where certain thinking modes are transferred into the device:

An obvious one is the ability to sit still for even 2 minutes with one's own thoughts. 9/10 would pull out their phone and start checking it. The ability to get around w/o google maps. Even knowing how warm it is w/o checking the weather app.

As someone who writes, I worry mostly about unconsciously adopting "facebook"-speak or "twitter"-speak.

I seriously think that when computers will be able to pass a Turing test, it will not be because AI developed a mind or a soul but because social media formats will eventually train humans to write and behave as if we don't have one lol lol emoji emoji no punctuation (don't forget to like and subscribe) (please share on twitter and instagram)

And yes, "society" really does expect that we all have a smartphone. This is not as bad in the US (yet?)---hey, you can still pay by check---but during my 2019 Denmark visit, going without was really handicapping---they consider themselves part of the e-frontier or some #@$@$ so even knowing when the friggin' bus arrives was only possible via an app (the plan with arrival times had been taken down; the bus stop was just an empty pole showing the number of the bus). On the flip side, the whole bus-app system was so coordinated that if a bus or train was delayed, the app would immediately know and reroute you telling you alternative routes, etc. Basically, you'd put your destination into the app, scan the QR at the bus to pay, and otherwise just follow the apps instructions. So for the users, it was extremely and utterly convenient. And so it went for almost everything (trains, banks, government, even paying for shit in stores in some cases), ...

After the trip and hearing my story someone gave me an ancient iPhone---the problem here being that of course these things don't update forever, so the idea of an old phone is good, but it can't be that old. Also you'd have to pay for a plan. I realize there are ways to "hack" a free solution but it's still possible to hack the other system by printing out QR codes, etc. It's just not as easy to live w/o a smartphone as it was even 10 years ago.

Qazwer
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Qazwer »

New technology has two components for good use. Purposeful activity and experimentation. You want to make sure that the technology actually improves your life. That it’s trade offs of time and cost are worth it. The goal since the first technologies sold for the seller is profit so it will be built for sales. The consumer needs to be aware and act accordingly. The only way to find out though is personal experiment, to try it. The wrinkle now is that most new technologies have both a network effect and get better exponentially. For example, imagine a person says I tried the internet 30 years ago. It sucked. Why would I just want to read text from some people in universities?
Therefore you need to consider sampling rates of experimentation to determine if the technology is helpful - go back to them every so often to see if it changed. But the results of whether it is good has to be done purposefully. Because as we know now, the statement is increasingly true that if you cannot figure out the product being sold then it is you.
I just do not know how to balance experimentation rates as my brain was not built in a world of network effects and exponential change.

IlliniDave
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by IlliniDave »

So far the only thing I know of that might be encumbered by my refusal to get a smart phone is transportation by air. I haven't tried it since 2008 so I don't know. At this point I have no plans that would require air travel anyway except maybe some float plane jaunts across roadless areas of Canada. Hope those services don't go ios app-only on me.

I might be in a pickle if my old Garmin GPS dies. But I still carry maps with me and review the routes on paper for any significant road trip ahead of time. I used to sort of collect maps as a kid, and soon will have some framed and hung on the walls at the hideout. So I'll never completely abandon them.

All my financial dealings can still be done by computer. All my 2-factor setups will text a code or call and deliver a code by "voice", most even have a security question option as well. After submitting this I'm going to Google QR code because I don't know what that is. :) But at some point I'll probably have to capitulate.

Hopefully I won't live to see the day when people detected on the street without their cell phone (/monitoring device) are whisked off to prison. I think it's coming though.

Qazwer
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Qazwer »

@iDave - when did you start to use the internet? Yes, you could live a good life without it. But it is just harder - see the past year. How do you know a computer in your pocket will not improve your life? Even if not now, how do you know that with societal dynamics changing that it will not benefit you in 5 years?
You could make similar arguments about any new technology - distracting - other ways around it. Changes life for the worse. It has happened with moveable type, the post office, the radio, television. Even land line telephones were supposed to stop us from writing and talking to people in person etc

slsdly
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by slsdly »

I hope the PinePhone does well. Lots of open source phones have been tried and failed. I am tempted to order one to contribute to the ecosystem. It is mostly a development platform at this moment, but it checks the boxes for easily replaceable parts, especially the battery, and a theoretical long support cycle. Linux distros still run just fine on ancient computers after all.

I think the phone itself is less the problem than the service. Get a phone supported by LineageOS and it will last a very long time (probably the battery will die first unfortunately). I *could* use my phone at home on the couch or something, but I rarely find myself doing that. I don't have data when I am outside the home, so I'm not tempted to Google something. Offline maps is useful but I am generally more inclined to get a little lost (on foot or bike).

While I am more inclined to "fewer, closer friends" over "many friends", I could not imagine them excluding me because they organize over Facebook or something. Maybe it is a generational thing. The reason we still use email for that sort of thing is because everyone has it in whatever form they prefer (choice of service, access terminal). Or maybe it is me holding everyone back (not received any complaints). Sometimes we use a Doodle poll to find a specific date/time.

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Ego
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by Ego »

I was decidedly anti-phone for years after Mrs. Ego was issued one for work in the 90s and it became a tether extending the workday indefinitely. Then I saw my Soylent Towers tenants who shunned new tech and got so far behind that they were unable to make informed decisions about what was useful and what was harmful. For them it became one big scary known-unknown and with each passing year the tech-unknowns grew and they dug their heels in deeper making the whole category a giant unknown-unknown.

In order to make informed decisions one must engage somewhat to maintain a basic understanding.

Today we have someone in our immediate vicinity who is a tech refuser. She strikes me as someone who has lost the ability to fully participate in the world. I often wonder if it is similar to those in the mid-century who never learned to read. Every time I interact with her I am reminded of the fact that Alzheimer's disease is highly correlated with hearing and sight loss. In many ways tech has become - for good and bad - a sense through which more and more people connect and interact. The more we use it, the less we use traditional modes and the people who rely exclusively on those traditional modes become isolated.

ducknald_don
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by ducknald_don »

Frugalchicos wrote:
Tue Jun 22, 2021 6:48 am
I don't think it is about the notifications. A phone is a distraction that you look from within just looking at anything on the browser, any other app you might have, the time which leads to 10 minutes spent catching up with messages, looking at pics, etc. It is not my case, but people are addicted to their phones, they scroll mindlessly without being present. Turning off notifications might help but not cure.
I think I've mostly avoided that by compartmentalising different tasks. Mindless surfing is something I do on my PC, not on my phone. For instance I almost never visit this place on my phone.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: Life without a cellphone

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

I went through attempting to get rid of my phone a few years ago and I came to a few conclusions.

You want to ask yourself why you want to kill off the phone. I know in my case, I had this fantasy about social media ruining society and wanting to get rid of my phone to escape Plato's cave essentially. But there were a few problems with this train of thought.

Problem #1 - It turns out, I don't actually really use my phone that much, and waste most of my time on my giant desktop computer. I'm just old school like that.

Problem #2 - The smartphone has fundamentally changed society, and you can't opt out. What I mean by this is that as more and more people spend more and more time on apps, those apps essentially become more real than real life. You saw this with the 2016 election, covid, etc, where the version of these events that took place on social media was more "real" in the minds of people than what was happening on the ground. It also occurs in people's personal lives too. People think the Facebook version of themselves is more real than the real version, events get organized online, etc.

You cannot opt out of this because opting out of it is like trying to opt out of life or your ability to participate in the world. And even if you, yourself, go full luddite, you still have to live in a world full of people and social relations that isn't. Furthermore, this trend is only going to get worse with time.

Now, this doesn't mean that you should give up and waste your time on TikTok either. But one does need to step back and consider the broader picture and not make the mistake of just trying to reject all of it, which isn't going to work.

This is basically what I did.

#1 - There are several good books on this topic one should read to understand the full problem. It's a lot more complicated than just "I waste time on the Internet," especially when you consider how this is effecting gen z/alpha. My recommendations are The Society of the Spectacle, Simulacra and Simulation, You Are Not A Gadget, and Amusing Ourselves to Death. Also research the Situationists International. The main thesis here is about how media and digital technologies reduce life and experience to mere images, and how relationships between people are reduced to relationships between images.

What is useful about understanding the full theory here is that you gain the ability to understand people who are still using the technology, which is critical to being able to still participate in the world without getting sucked in yourself. I think people who are Kegan3 or lower are particularly vulnerable to having their identities and relationships driven unconsciously by apps and media images, and it really helps to understand how and why this happens, and the long history of it dating back to the invention of mass media.

#2 - Didn't buy a new phone for like 10 years and counting. What happened is my old phone has gotten progressively more crappy to the point that no apps except texting and calling work. Maps doesn't work, I have to keep the screen in black and white to conserve power. It's a smartphone that has gone to being a dumbphone via sheer age. Two factor authentication still works. This has restored my ability to read a map and sit still for over two minutes.

#3 - I haven't done this yet, but the honestly most practical solution is to get a pay-as-you-go phone and consider it a life head tax and just try to use it as little as possible. The standard advice holds true here. Don't install apps, don't turn on notifications, leave it at home when you can, etc. It's either this or use the increasingly difficult workaround solutions that will slowly die anyway off as gen z/alpha take over. Yes, this sucks, but you can't rewind and the world isn't going back. Also consider doing things like dropping Netflix, video games, etc, as these have all the same "experience as image" problem that social media have.

The problem is so much broader in scale than just your phone, and the strategies used to combat developing goldfish brain while still existing meaningfully in the world also have to be broad in scale.

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