Yeah, I love my phone and the whole world it opens up, having access to so much information in my pocket. But I also hate how tied we are to them now. I bought tickets for a gig recently and the only way I can access them is by downloading an app (that I’m only going to use for this one gig). What if I didn’t have a smartphone? What if I didn’t want to take a smartphone to a gig? You aren’t allowed to go to this gig without one, and it’s a small thing, but I don’t like how the option is out of your hands.
Pretty much every supermarket in the UK now requires you to download an app so you can access their offers. I hate this so much.
As someone who grew up before computers and smartphones were commonplace, for the most part you could still life in the same way as you did before computers and smartphones, because all the things you’d need still exist. You’d just be horribly out of the loop of the way modern life functions… But you could do it.
What’s interesting is that pretty much no one wants to live this way any more. It was pretty damn boring a lot of the time.
I thought I lost my phone before moving states and nearly burst into tears. It has my insurance, the map, what if something happened to me on the road, etc. It was an awful spiraling feeling. Thankfully I found it, but it was a hard reality check of how much I have tied to this little device.
I run a contracting business and have had straight panic attacks over not being able to find my phone as I’m rushing out the door for the day. I really need to set up an asterisk server and keep my sim cards there but I just don’t have time, nor am I paying a service a ridiculous monthly fee to run it.
Uhm can you explain a little more about the asterisk server and the sims cards. I thought asterisk wasn’t for mobile phones.
I’m trying to remember myself, but I remember reading about a way to feed a sim interface into a digital telephony card for use with asterisk. It was basically like a modem the fed a voip/sip line into the system. This was years ago that I read this and I could be completely misremembering it.
Modern life is difficult without internet access, but yet you can live without internet, the question is, how long?
Depends on what standard of living you desire and where you are- If you want to live as a hobo then as long as you survive your basic biological needs you could go indefinitely without internet, the same is true of any outsdoorsman who lives in a remote area where they can survive just based on their ability to hunt and collect water.
Maybe you should try to live in a third world country, not necessarily a hobo but a regular life without commidities you have been granted for you priviliges.
Its like living in hard difficulty
It’s not. I’m from a third world country and almost everybody no matter what has at least a smartphone, a motorcycle, a TV and booze.
People from developed nations tend to not have the slightest understanding of what third world countries look like and generally just think of those pictures of subsaharan African children starving near huts in the savannah.
The reality of it is that living in a third world country doesn’t immediately mean you have no access to commodities or modern items. It’s not living in the past. Usually it means you have to work your ass harder than anybody in a first world country to afford some imported or more globalised items. Your labour rights are poorer, your working hours longer and your career growth more limited, but I’m sick of all the American (and to some extent European) exceptionalism where people think citizens of third world countries can’t even have a smartphone.
You can even enjoy relative luxury without being part of corrupt government circles or even rich. Like… most people can at least afford to go to vacation to national parks or popular destinations. And sure, they go by bus, or they have to save longer for it, but this notion that third world citizens are necessarily in a constant state of misery and extreme poverty is actually quite harmful. It prevents professionals and highly qualified workers from being taken seriously or from getting rid of negative stigma surrounding their country of origin.
Which country are you from? If you don’t mind me asking.
I’m in USA bouncing between major west coast cities. I was thinking of Seattle when I wrote that.
Does anyone disagree with this? My city gives out smartphones to people who can’t afford them because it’s cheapest way they can get access to city services. Much more efficient then having staff in an office to enter data and make calls on their behalf.
Do they also have access to public internet and public charging stations? What happens if the phone is lost or damaged??
I’m not 100% but they will replace the phone if damaged. I’m not sure about if it is lost. There is probably a cut off where giving out phones is considered worse than having social workers enter data for certain people. There is housing assistance which would include electricity. I suppose you could charge at city service points? The cell phone plan includes Internet access.
The one thing that really makes me sad about common cellphone usage is the lack of face-to-face connection. It’s a trip because I went through middle and high-school without smart phones, everyone did. I miss those regular, everyday connections with people.
Those that haven’t gown up a significant amount of time without smartphones don’t think the difference is that severe, or that the connections we’ve replaced them with are the same or superior, but it just… isn’t.
I dont own a cellphone and get by through borrowing family member’s phones or asking strangers if I can make a call if I’m out on my own, it usually works out fairly well.
However whenever I run into online services that require a phone to make an account or whatever I usually get screwed- so I usually just use a family member’s phone # if I know they’ll never use the site or whatever or utilize a 10 minute/fake phone # creation site if I dont care about the site or service I’m signing up for.
To be fair you are the burden on your family here. This isn’t living without - it’s sticking everyone else with your problem.
That’s how I read it too. It’s not “look how well I’m doing without a smart phone”, it’s more like “I don’t want a phone, but have no issues placing the burden of my actions on others”
It’s not him that gets consequences of a leaked number.
Eh, I assure you the burden of buying a brand new 500~1000$ phone and then paying a monthly bill to provide it with service would be a far far greater burden then allowing me to use their phone to make important calls once a week if not less, and letting me use it to sign up to a site/video game maybe a couple times a year.
If you still have good computer access, you could make a Google phone number. Pretty much what it sounds like, gives you a free phone number, you can check messages / calls all on desktop
