Slashdot Mirror
Why It's Bad That Smartphones Have Banished Boredom
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Gross writes that thanks to technology, there's been a recent sea change in how people today kill time. 'Those dog-eared magazines in your doctor's office are going unread. Your fellow customers in line at the deli counter are being ignored. And simply gazing around at one's surroundings? Forget about it.' With their games, music, videos, social media and texting, smartphones 'superstimulate,' a desire humans have to play when things get dull, says anthropologist Christopher Lynn and he believes that modern society may be making that desire even stronger. 'When you're habituated to constant stimulation, when you lack it, you sort of don't know what to do with yourself,' says Lynn. 'When we aren't used to having down time, it results in anxiety. 'Oh my god, I should be doing something.' And we reach for the smartphone. It's our omnipresent relief from that.' Researchers say this all makes sense. Fiddling with our phones, they say, addresses a basic human need to cure boredom by any means necessary. But they also fear that by filling almost every second of down time by peering at our phones we are missing out on the creative and potentially rewarding ways we've dealt with boredom in days past. 'Informational overload from all quarters means that there can often be very little time for personal thought, reflection, or even just 'zoning out,'" researchers write. 'With a mobile (phone) that is constantly switched on and a plethora of entertainments available to distract the naked eye, it is understandable that some people find it difficult to actually get bored in that particular fidgety, introspective kind of way.'"
I think they may have a point. Every time I go for a dump, I take my phone with me and have a quick dash around with Temple Run
Sometimes though, it's just a quick dash with the runs
Watch those corners
I can consistently pick out the Hugh Pickens submissions just by looking at the titles in the RSS feed.
And Hugh, please don't construe that as a *good* thing...
Why is reading a crappy magazine in the doctor's office more productive than using your smartphone? I hate when people spew opinions like this without showing at least ONE piece of data/evidence that using a smartphone is more harmful than the alternative (the other things we do when we're bored).
And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?
You mean the ones that aren't news but are very well written like someone is retired and always wanted to be a reporter with endless time on their hands? It's like the articles that are a sudden moment of perceived clarity or a list of something or situational humor turned into news. "And what's the deal with smartphones? Did you ever noticed how before we used to actually think about stuff and look around? What's up with that?"
Slashdot leaps to mind...
I'll do what I want. I don't care what you used to do in the olden days. If you want to be bored, go for it.
It's like people whining about magazines closing. Apparently one is closing now, in the UK. Some people are signing a petition. Who are they going to present it to? I bet hardly any of them actually bought it.
I can remember waiting awkwardly in line with other people with nothing more to do then stare at some advertisement or products around me. I, and certainly no one around me, wanted to start up a random stranger dialogue and shoot the shit. This alone caused me to be anxious. I hated waiting because I didn't know what to do, shuffle shuffle shuffle, hands in pockets, out of pockets, sigh, yawn... shuffle.
I welcome the soft glow of my phone. It makes DMV, Passport agency, and anything in a municipal building _just a bit better_. Likely a few years from now an anthropologist will do a study about how fewer people are going 'postal' while waiting in line for some bureaucracy. How after waiting in line a few hours, the ability to play angry birds kept them from thinking about how much money they were going to be docked when they got back to work. It just may save someone's life.
Also, lets not drone on about this 'habitual stimulation' always being entertainment. I see people on the subway who somehow manage to play games and watch videos, but I see just as many reading. Not to say reading can't be entertainment ( or that games and video can't be learning tools ). Just grouping everything people do with their smartphones into 'entertainment' is wrong.
tl;dr: anthropologist overreacts.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
It's called a Portable PC -- AKA Laptop / Notebook. Instead of fucking around with those damn consumtion centric smart phones and tablet devices I use a fully functional portable computer instead. I can make phone calls with it too (even better: Hands Free Video Chat), but typically I just use a cheap dumb "feature" phone for voice. If I can't compile my C programs on it, it's a worthless toy that I don't need. I've tried installing Debian on an Android Tablet, got a stand and portable bluetooth keyboard working... Then I realized how assinine it was to NOT be using a Laptop instead. Yeah it weighs a little bit more than a phone, and is slightly more cumbersome to cary than a purse, but I've got a messenger bag anyway and I'm not a fucking wimp.
Not that I don't have the constant urge to be doing something -- I do, that sense of urgency is due to my limited 70-100yr lifespan. What I do to "kill time" is actually creative. When the urge strikes I make something, or jot notes on how to realize the idea later. I'm just as habitually a creator as most smartphone "addicts" are media consumers. The difference between me and smart phone users is that I don't whip out my laptop while I'm supposed to be socializing at a restaurant -- Oh, that would be rude... Protip: I think it's just as rude when you smartphone users do that.
tl;dr
I get a lot of my most useful ideas in the shower. So lets hope they don't make a waterproof phone or I will stop innovating all together.
Just go out for a walk whenever you need to gather your thoughts and zone out for a bit. Touchscreens and walking don't mix...
This tip works great until you get to the point where you subscribe to a large enough number of podcasts that there's always a queue lined up for you in your podcast player. If you're like me you can still zone out or let your mind drift a bit during the boring parts of the podcasts. Also, obviously, if you go out for a walk without your headset you commit to not listening to podcasts or music.
When I started my meditation practice I was a full blown smart-phone addict. One of the hardest earliest barriers to get over was the idea of sitting idle for 30 minutes. Somehow mindlessly browsing reddit was okay but just sitting and watching my breath was not. I'd get flooded with all kinds of thoughts about how I should be doing something productive and typically that was accompanied by anxiety.
At some point I had to stop and ask myself, who exactly do I think is judging my behavior? Why do I even feel like I need to justify what I'm doing with my personal time? Of course the realization came that it was all me, all my mind, and I let go of the habit.
Now I meditate regularly and still use my smart phone. I look forward to sitting and knowing I get time to just be. I'm comfortable with that and reap the benefits. I'm significantly less stressed during the day and my mind is calmer. I understand myself and my actions better. I still use the phone, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's nice to just be with your own mind.
I wouldn't say smartphones have only banished boredom though. They, like many of our modern baubles, have also lowered the bar for when boredom sets in.
An aside I feel is related I can't remember the last time I had a good meaningful conversation with a group of friends or even one on one. Hell, even meaningless conversation with depth seems to have left. It seems like on average things are being reduced to one or two sentences on a topic and topics which require multiple layers of thinking just don't come up.
I find it paradoxical as someone who was a loner in school I can look at my life now and see more friends, supportive family, great co-workers, technology like facebook, SMS, and smart phones to be always connected and yet I feel more alone than I ever have. I feel lacking in community.
A classic example is the Kalman Filter. Devised by Kalman while he was waiting in a train station. We may not have that innovation today if he'd had an iPhone.
Is while car pooling, the driver pulling out his smartphone and dicking around with it, eyes not on the road, barrelling along at 80 mph, in moose country, in the dark. Makes one appreciate not car pooling and just driving myself to work alone.
Most of us have 8 hours everyday for "zoning out"...
Sometimes he felt the need to take it out and hide from the real world.
Always in his pocket, the temptation grew stronger and stronger.
"We are what we do" - it is ingrained in our culture that be must 'do' rather than 'be'. We have a total incapacity to enjoy peacefulness - to the point it makes us anxious. Why is it we need a constant distraction from not only the world around us, but from ourselves?
I get it now. Bored people have more Sex... therefore..... This is an organized effort toward population control!!!
Neat trick. And here I thought it was merely a way to track every aspect of our lives in order to sell us more stuff.
My bad.
When you're feeling bored, don't grab your smartphone, go read a book. You can even upload books on your smartph... no, never mind.
I know a number of people who must have a TV going, no matter how mindless whatever show is that's on. I'm sure they probably have infomercials going at 2 in the morning. I always assumed that if they didn't have constant inane chatter going, they might actually start thinking and realize their own mortality or the meaninglessness of their lives or something. If you get one of these people someplace that doesn't have a TV, they will just natter on. If you want to make them really uncomfortable, just grin and don't say anything when they wind down, and watch them start to fidget! Just about the time they open their mouth to say something else, ask them what they're so afraid of. That freaks them out!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Phones are just the most immediate example. Computers, tablets, TV, video-game consoles... there are thousands of ways I can keep occupied. I never have an opportunity to be bored because I have so many alternatives.
I'm trying to write a novel. I find it EXCEEDINGLY difficult because when I'm staring at that blank screen trying to coalesce my thoughts into words, I am constantly reminded of all my other options. Maybe just a quick jump to Wiki for some "research" or, maybe I'll take a break on the XBox. Oooh, call of nature? Grab the iPad! And I never leave the house without my e-reader (actually, an iPod touch, but that's its primary purpose) in my pocket.
Smartphones just add to that chaos.
I finally concluded the only way I was going to get any work done was to leave it behind. So every day I walk two miles down the road to a nice park... and I write with a pen and pencil. It's worked so far.
It's all TL;DR.
*goes back to playing angry birds*
Huh? No, I am not over stimulated! My attention span is just fine, thank you ver-
*angry angry birds*
Makes a good point which, however, was better made by Nicolas Carr in "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains".
Technology shapes social interaction. This brings to mind, the "sex scene" between Spartan and Huxley.
I'm a 26 year old graduate student, and I got rid of my cell phone in 2009. Never been happier, never looked back. AMA.
I'm never bored. My imagination can keep me occupied for hours. I don't know if this is good or bad, it just is.
Or sometimes you provide TMI to /.
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I don't get it when people lament about what technology has made them "lose." All one needs to do is change one's behavior, and instantly go back to the way things used to be. Or back to how they are now. Look! Options! More options than we had before!
I fail to see how anyone has lost anything of value. If, instead, the whiny writer is complaining that he can't put down the smart phone and smell the flowers, then his real problem is a lack of willpower.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
"This invention is the ruination of society, and will corrupt our precious bodily fluids!" --- all people afraid of the future throughout history ever
Am i the only person that never fall into "Boredom" cause i ever had Crosswords on my jacket internal pocket ?
As an introvert who loves just thinking at times (I'm sure there are a few on this site), before cell phones,I noticed people found ways to occupy themselves without reflective thought. I didn't because it's in my nature, I like looking around at things and thinking when I'm idle...it's natural to me really. I think it really is more of a predisposition thing than something cell phones are encouraging/causing. One of my friends who's a polar opposite said this: "Now with the internet, you can stay put and not be bored while before you always had to do something."...I don't need to do anything and I never really understood others' "boredom".
If that sounded like "hypothesizing", well it is. Note that TFA gives no studies but a damn survey, so his opinion is as good as my own, I guess. Another problem with TFA...Getting expert opinion is nice but a study verifying this "hypothesis" is actual science would be much better than opinions.
If your cell phone is a "distraction" all the time, you're using it wrong. Not that having a distraction from time to time is a bad thing. Still, my phone is a tool to get things done, which allows me to do more of what I want to do. Between work and my hobby/social activities, I probably have the equivalent of three pre-smart-phone full time jobs, and almost nothing gets lost or dropped or forgotten.
I still have "down time," it just gets interrupted less by all those nagging items I used to have to keep track of manually. My down time is of a higher quality now.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Each new advance in consumer gadgetry affords the hyperactive lemming a new channel for mindless amusement. The creative and the imaginative among us are thereby amused by the playful lemmings, in much the same vein as the Darwin awards. An ironic win/win, isn't it?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
You stare at your Iphone.
I'll stare at the fire.
Thanks, though.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Unfortunately, the 18-year-old is so preoccupied with responding to text messages on her phone and posting to Facebook on her iPad that she can't read this article, answer a simple question or have a normal conversation. I am not exaggerating. She comes to see me because I have internet service and Wi-Fi. She drives, but I'm not sure how. Every time I try to engage her to discuss something important, the phone beeps and she has to leave to see someone. She has a minimum wage job and the other day she announced she was getting an iPhone. Cell phone companies have done a great job convincing poor people that they need $100/mo cell phones when they can barely afford a place to live or pay for medical expenses. I fear her mind is gone.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I ride a lot on commuter trains, and I notice that most folks who are talking on the phone really aren't saying anything. But many seem to have a fear of not talking on the phone. As soon as they end one call, they call someone else, to talk about what they talked about on the last call. When they lose their connection, they break out in a sweaty panic.
It reminds me of little kids, who get afraid and cry when their parents leave to room. The kids have a feeling of being abandoned: that their parents will be gone forever. It's almost the same way with folks with phones now. If they are not talking on the phone, they lose their lifeline to this universe, and will cease to exist.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Was there this much rampant pop psychology surrounding the emergence of television? It certainly seems like they've already surpassed the "video games and violence" studies in sheer number. Every time a new technology is adopted en mass, there's certainly an overabundance of pop psychology "studies" signalling plenty of FUD over it. I can remember at least some of these media-reported "studies" turning out to be undergrad class projects with samplings in the dozens, spanning all of a month.
I own it completely and utterly. At any moment I will do as I please no matter what an anthropologist or moralist says. I work, I play, I have a wife and two friends with further benefits -- I like occupying my time. I also like watching football on TV, reading books, listening to music and sometimes just closing my eyes and taking a nap in a comfy chair with my cat nearby. My life is quite full and enjoyable right now and to be quite honest I don't give a damn what someone thinks about any aspect of it.
Funny.... I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451 with my 13 yr old this week.. I think he was on to something,
It's not that they're afraid they'll 'cease to exist' but separation anxiety is a bit closer to the truth -- anxiety disorders have become epidemic in recent years for a number of reasons I won't get into here, and talking to someone familiar is a typical way of preventing panic attacks due to agoraphobia, or claustrophobia, both of which become a factor when you're locked on a train with strange people. The part of your brain prone to panic doesn't understand that the familiar person you're talking to isn't actually there with you, and so becomes relaxed. Once they're 'gone', and you're 'alone' again, all of the anxiety comes back.
Let's be honest: what was the basic action against boredom? TV!
I, for one, consider smartphones much more useful gap-fillers than television (or on the toilet: reading shampoo usage instructions :). On the television you only rarely watch meaningful programmes, and even if you do, selection is much more limited. (Fox news, hello.)
On the smartphone you read news, you read blogs, you watch youtube videos. It can, of course be "abused" for gaming, but you get bored with a certain game lot sooner than you'd think.
Scott Adams addressed this last year in his blog. http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/creativity/
It amazes me that there is no decent website with up to date information on smartphones. I mean, aside from the typical advertisement sites. For example one which you can specify criteria to browse available devices. Say you only want to see smarthones running Windows Mobile that have a 1d barcode scanner and bluetooth etc.
I actually feel dumber after reading the summary.
I speak from experience. Boredom is still alive and well... Every day I experience it for 9 hours at work.
Aren't these just a high-tech version of what we put in babies mouths to shut them up?
There was an article on CNN's web site the other day from a supposed comedian about how he was challenged to go an entire day without his phone.
He wrote about how he was able to look around as he walked around New York, observing other people, looking in shop windows, etc, all for about 15 minutes when he started to get anxious that maybe someone, somewhere was trying to contact him. Maybe by voice, maybe by email.
So he made a big production of trying to finding a Net cafe wherein he was able to check his email and found, contrary to his narcissism, only some generic emails but nothing of importance.
He also regaled us with his commentary on finding a pay phone in New York, and how it smelled and looked like a latrine, and when he called his voice mail, miracles of miracles, there were no messages.
So yes, smarthphones may have "banished" boredom, but it has created a whole host of other problems with people having separation anxiety if they're not hooked in for five minutes.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I like to ask my kids- what would have happened to the United States if Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were hooked on watching The Amazing Race or playing Angry Birds instead of reading history and writing the constitution? That couldn't happen to such smart guys, you say? What if they had been trained from early childhood to just sit and watch whatever was on the TV or to play twitch games instead of doing something constructive?
When I was a kid I built a lot of models, rewired telephones and I watched Star Trek. One scene that helped define my life was when Spock was apparently staring off into space, and Kirk asked: "Shouldn't you be working on that warp implosion equation?" (or something like that) To which Spock replied with utmost confidence, "I am."
I was so impressed with that, that I started looking for problems to solve and solving them in my head -- things like calculating the length of a train based on my speed in the car, the train's speed and how long it took our car to overtake it (this required having my dad match the speed of the train and then drop back far enough to accelerate to a steady speed to overtake it. Good thing I had accommodating parents!) I got so good at this kind of thing that I failed a math test (multiplying matrices) in High School. "But I got all the answers right." I confidently told the teacher. "Yes, but you didn't show any work, at all. There are only answers here. You obviously copied someone else's paper." I reminded her that I was the first to tun mine in, by a long shot. She begrudgingly gave me the 100%.
You can imagine that this skill helped out tremendously in software development.
All I have to say is, if you ever get bored, ever, then you're not doing it right, even if you don't have anything to play with but your wits. Temple run? I tried it once. Once. Boooooooring!
It's one of the things I like about taking a motorcycle out on a trip or even a day ride. Since you can't browse the internet[0] or make phone calls[1], I tend to enjoy the ride free of distractions. After a bit of time, I've flushed all thoughts of work out of my mind and start thinking of other things. It frees my mind to come up with interesting ideas.
It's a problem my wife and I have had. She wants to go out for a hike and spends the time just being in the woods, one with nature. I'm constantly thinking of other things while walking or even things about the hike itself. Especially since I'm a gamer, I'm thinking tactics or even historical information (more like, "I wonder who found this trail, think about what it would have been like to be trailing a mule up into the mountains looking for gold").
The bad part is even when I write them down, when I get home I'm distracted by all the other stuff again so I have several partially started or projects that aren't started at all sitting around the house. I find I have to really force myself to shut out reading Slashdot or any of the other forums I follow in order to get other computer type stuff done.
[John]
[0] There are folks who'll try anything. I've seen pictures of guys on cruisers talking on their cell phones.
[1] Technically you can use a bluetooth headset or wired connection to make calls. I've used them and they're fine for accepting them but making a call is a bit more difficult unless you stop first.
Shit better not happen!
Proof of concept: here I am killing the time while waiting or the train by reading Slashdot! and by doing so I am also destroying my long range sight (I need glasses for seeing far away but in short range it is still good). When will the dream of ubiquitous computing become true?
Sometimes I think we as humans can't stand to be alone with ourselves doing nothing...so we call people for the social contact. In the old days, this need was satiated by writing letters and sending them off....despite the obvious latency. On the flip side, my commute is often the only time of the day/week when I have time to make personal calls...so all my relationship maintaining calls get crammed into an hour or less each day when I'm commuting.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Boredom, like retirement, is an artificial modern thing. Our ancestors weren't bored. They had a tremendous amount to get done. Be busy, prepare for winter, drought or what ever or you will die.
Our family has a small farm. We're never bored. There is alway plenty to do.
Back in the days when I was young, you could smoke almost everywhere (Europe here), and nobody cared. There are still ashtrays in the trains and bathroom stalls at our university, however you cannot use them anymore (at least for their original purpose). Whenever someone got bored, they smoked. And put a bunch of smokers together, and they start chatting...
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
Even though I have a "smartphone" and enjoy it sometimes for all it can offer I purposely go out of my way to read magazines waiting in offices(if its something cool like NG, et al). When riding the train to/from work(the worst place to see gadgetophilia) I listen to music or read a book or magazine.
I noticed when the iPhone and Droids first came out, that within a few months it had become the norm in our society to "veg out" on these devices, not only to the detriment of public safety(driving, walking, etc) but to the detriment of common courtesy and respect in dealing with others in our society(queue George Castanza).
These devices are great and I use mine like the rest of us, but I think people need to exhibit some self control in their use.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Why is this story tagged science? I RTFA, and I didn't see any science there. I see an opinion piece from an anthropologist, without a shred of actual science attached to it. No studies, no control group, no data, nothing.
Really? And where are the psychological studies to back this up? Neurological data? I thought not. Typical ivory tower "publish or perish" piece crapped out by the soft "sciences".
It's just a fad. After a while people get bored with playing/reading/gaming on their smartphones all the time. They again will long for just gazing at nothing while standing in line, &tc.
People who have "anxiety disorders" ought to go and try living in Africa or India without any money for a few months.
Think about the last time you had a revelation -- walking somewhere by yourself, washing yourself in the shower, driving somewhere without the radio on. That's valuable thinking time.
I used to be on Twitter dozens of times a day -- no pictures of the meal I was about to eat, but lots of surfing. I took a two week trip to China, and limited my wireless access to a few times a day for E-Mail only -- the rest of the time I was off the grid. Now I'm back in Canada, I'm continuing that trend -- I've visted Twitter a few times, but my participation is way down. Even riding the subway with my eyes closed is a nice respite from a busy day.
It's important to get your brain some time off.
Most people don't have an iota of creativity in them. None. Zero. Nada. The smartphone won't change that.
Are there creative geniuses being suppressed because of non-stop access to entertainment? Probably not. Being creative isn't just coming up with ideas, it's executing those ideas. Execution requires focus. If you're distracted by your phone, you'd be distracted by pretty much everything else as well.
I think that process discipline counts for more than creativity. If you read "how I write" books, a common theme is to dedicate X hours a day for writing, period. You can write or not write, but you have to sit there and do nothing else.
That sort of discipline is probably something they should teach in school, but they don't. Of course the phones don't help, but if you can't ignore your phone you won't be able to ignore anything else either (like windows solitaire, the bane of authors and writers everywhere).
I spent about 5 years with sever sleeping problems. They called it sleep maintenance issues where I would wake up consistently after only a few hours of sleep and could never get back to sleep. After trying all sorts of treatments myself I went to the Dr who gave me sleeping pills that drove me crazy... Literally don't ever take Ambien it's almost like taking low dosages of LSD. But anyway after they took me off the medication the nurse suggested that as an IT guy I'm probably getting to much stimulation. I cut back on my use of cell phones and computers and walla - I sleep like a brick. If I spend to much time on the computer or if I watch Netflix to soon before going to bed.. I wake up like clockwork in the middle of the night.
Most people don't realize it but these devices seriously over stimulate people. Even more so for people like myself who have engineering positions and use our brains all day and need the down time so our bodies can work right.
I've been thinking about it since my son was born, and I think a lot of these things they're saying are true (for me at least). Originally, I had planned to get an sgs3 when I returned to the States, but now I'm thinking I'll probably buy something more like an older nokia bar phone, and in fact newegg has one for about $30 (with built-in flashlight?!?).That coupled with no need (or ability) to use data on a prepaid plan probably means I'll end up saving tons of otherwise doubly wasteful cash, since I would be spending it on something that would just waste more time. If I keep it long enough, then it's that much better for the environment as well. Yes, I'm that guy.
1)Twitter 2) Facebook 3) Smart Phones and 4) [reader's choice]... it's as if there's a war not FOR your attention but ON your attention .
Here's a little true story that highlights the relative value of "keeping up" with spending the same time in serious dedicated study and thought.
When I was in high school, I had a buddy whose dad was a full math prof. at an Ivy League. His house didn't have a TV
If you asked this guy :"why no TV?", he'd say that most of that stuff was of no real interest and if anything really big happened, someone would tell him about it.
We all thought of him as eccentric and maybe he was.
Then 9-11 happened and he left his job at the uni to go head up a new department at the NSA which was based around his specialty.
Some people "keep up" with events and other people ...well, they have a hand in making those events.
So self medicating, wonder what doctors would say about this medication...
Look, I'm about as technologically inclined as it gets. I'm posting this from my current generation Android, I work in software, I read tech blogs daily. But I also hike and do Zen meditation and zone out at my desk at work. It's not an either / or proposition. You can have both.
I am standing in the queue for free organic-grown vegetables on a college campus. The students doing this are very professional and capable and not like the hippie farmers in Easy Rider, but still, standing in a queue for free organic vegetables is a kind of hippie "share the love" kind of thing not for "uptight" people and squares. Still . . .
The dude standing in front of me is making minor doodles on his spiral-notebook work journal. The notebook entries have some familiarity to me, which I suspect are "adjoint forms" or some mathematician boojum for stuff than engineers notate differently.
"Hi. Couldn't help from noticing what you are working on. Group theory?
(curtly and in a Francophone accent) "No, abstract algebra . . ." (yeah, as if there was some difference between the two)
"What is your affiliation on campus?"
"Grad student in mathematics."
"My work is in engineering. You know, there is a lot of interest in the community studying robotics and machine mechanisms in applications of abstract algebra."
(silence)
I have a paper out on using algebraic formal power series expansions to solve for linkage mobility. You do any work with series expansions?
(silence)
(we get closer to the head of the line) Those green tomatoes over there -- you can eat those, they are just a special kind that stays green when they are ripe.
(silence)
Doctors don't like self medication; It infringes on their monopoly.
Somewhere between "many" and "most" innovations would happen within a decade if that person did not exist. It would be interesting speculate on which things may not have come to be - but that is another topic for another day.
Ever been to a management meeting? Design meeting, or even a meeting about meetings? Since you can't just fire up some words with friends or browse slashdot on your phone in a meeting you get to zone out. Also, college courses are perfect for this or anytime where you are understimulated and can't use a device to compensate.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
"Because for some reason antiquated information services are superior to modern ones, in the same way that by having automobiles we're losing on the bond with nature we used to enjoy when all we had was a horse, a buggy, and stunning view of the horses ass".
You basically nailed it. It's a case of 10 steps forward with smartphones and then just take 2 steps back if you inadvertently end up with too many Favorite Sites to watch, so fine, cull them a little.
These "Back in the Good Ol' Days" articles are pretty bogus. How many of us remember having to kill 3 hours playing Kick the Can maybe before our parents were free to take us to the fair or something. Or later, the 2 hour phone convos consisting of "I'm bored." "Yeah, me too. Nothing to do on a Wednesday night."
As for those people who are apparently the saving grace of conversation, anyone remember getting into a conversation like "Ford Bronco has more horsepower." "No, Chevy all the way man, Fords are for wimps." And there was no way to settle it. Now you just go to the much maligned Wikipedia, pick your models, and the winner of the argument emerges in about twenty minutes.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
First, I totally agree with you about the magazine/smartphone thing - I'm not sure why reading news and articles on your smart phone is any different than reading them on a dead tree - except that the dead tree is more likely to be 6 months old and only of historical interest.
"And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?"
I think the focus there is that people weren't generally playing video games standing in store lines, or sitting at the doctors office (well, Gameboy/PSP, duh; so it still seems this article is about 15 years late to the party).
That is, in the past, when entertainments were more rooted to a particular place, we had more downtime in our lives that was forced on us, but smartphones (and probably gameboys, though they don't seem to be called out in the article) give us the chance to reach nearly 100% "occupation" of our minds.
Please do.
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it. Neil Gaimain
Boredom is useful to me when I notice it and think: Oh I'm bored; there must be something else I want to be doing... boredom acts as an initiator of originality by pushing me into new activities or new thoughts. Hugh Prather
You can also *read books* on your phone. Right now I'm reading Proust. So there is quite a bit of angsty introspection going on in my life right now. So just because someone is looking at their phone non-stop doesn't mean they're playing a game, or tweeting, or whatever. And if you're shallow, don't blame it on the phone, or the internet, or connectivity. Just spend less time with Angry Birds and more time with Thoreau.
Get outside once in a while and leave anything battery powered inside. Your business doesn't _deserve_ having you on-call 24/7. Go out and study trees, or clouds, and see how the world's made. Go to the beach and take a dead tree book. Your stress levels will be a LOT better in the long run.
...my family is definitely addicted to A/V and computer games. Movies are watched, TV shows are seen every night, and video games / inet videos are seen almost all day long.
Funny thing is that when there was a massive storm complex that took out power several times at the household when I was visiting, there was an interesting effect:
We went outside and threw frisbees at the large field across the street. We talked, joked, and even starting getting pretty extreme with the physical exertion.
Guess what happened as soon as the power came back on (lights could be seen outside)? Yep, I'm sure you guessed it correctly; everyone got quiet, slowly walked back toward the house, reset clocks, and turned on the TV and computers.
*sigh* If it were only easy enough to get it through peoples' heads nowadays that there are other things out there in the world aside from their gadgets and appliances, things would be a lot more interpersonal in a direct way and not so... fake.
Just my worthless $0.0002.
"Freedom of speech is too precious a freedom to be meddled with..... And since I am sure of this in general, and since I'd expect most of you to be so too, I shall probably shock you when I say it is the purpose of my lecture tonight to argue in one particular area just the opposite. To argue, in short, in favour of censorship against freedom of expression, and to do so in an area of life that has traditionally been regarded as sacrosanct. I am talking about moral and religious education. And especially the education a child receives at home....parents (have) no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose....in short, children have the right not to have their minds addled by (religion). And we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon. That's the negative side of what I want to say. But there will be a positive side as well. If children have a right to be protected from false ideas, they have too a right to be succored by the truth. And we as a society have a duty to provide it."
-- Nicholas Humphrey, addressing Amnesty International
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I think the article touches on a subject that could be a major issue. We can think of a reactive mind as a mind that doesn't function when not stimulated, and an active mind as a mind that doesn't need stimulation in order to work. Then our addiction to stimuli, going all the way back to the walkman but steadily strengthening, would mean we're creating reactive minds that can't work autonomously anymore. All statistically speaking of course. Combine that with a shortening attention span and possibly we're losing some important skills. But I'm hypothesising.
Note the difference however with 'boredom'. Whenever we talk about boredom it's treated as an internal stimulance to get your brain going. Well that remains to be seen. What I see happening is an internal stimulance to start surfing.
Only in a pampered 1st world where life is too good would this be considered a "problem". It is the secular version of angels dancing on a pinhead. I guarantee you the non-Moslem in Saudi Arabia has better things to worry about than too much cell phone overload. Or the ex-Bain employee who was fired by Romney.
As I get older and have more responsibilities, I really miss the times when I had downtime to just chill, observer, remember, or think. I was always bored to a degree as a child, and that was terrible, but I did learn a ton about the things around me and develop a lot of creativity (I believe) partly because of it. There definitely needs to be a balance. Before highschool, I drew on a weekly basis. Until I had kids, I hadn't drawn since those times. It definitely fills a certain void that has been there. So yeah, constantly staying entertained (TV, games, phone, etc.) is good for a certain type of thinking but is bad for thinking and creativity. No doubt.
What's the point of research if you don't publish your results?
Well, why are the manhole covers made in India?
Smartphones are just tools, but they are designed to give us access to media. Media is wonderful and empowering, but when it's trivial and we spend most of our free time accessing it (watching TV, reading magazines or whatever), we're conditioned into thinking that what's important is not Here, but There. That's a drag on focused, disciplined use of time. And I believe it ultimately degrades the sense of self of the user. Unless they're dumb!
Have you noticed that most good group conversations deteriorate once a dumb/assertive person gets the idea to force everyone into watching an internet video? Then of course, the next most dumb/assertive person makes everyone watch another video.... At least ads before videos are putting a slight kibosh on this.
All over I see people with something plugged into their ears. Looking at some sort of screen. No one ever looks up and around to explore anymore, or takes in the beauty of the landscape and architecture around them. I watch these people and look around and learn all sorts of things about the environment. I explore where people don't generally go, and find all sorts of treasures. The people fiddling with their phones miss a lot.
Great comment bro
I'm not sure how smartphones "superstimulate" over any other old idle preoccupation. We natually just wanna play games during our idleness. Those on smartphones seem for me to a perfect distraction for our minds, which otherwise, in idle reflection, really just zone out to habitual thoughts.
I am sometime surrounded by people all hooked to their smartphones. This gives me a strange feeling that they have lost some humanity. They are not there anymore, they are just ghosts.
May you NOT kill an innocent person while driving and fucking with your phone...
Second of all, I am first generation of European immigrant parents, and Mom had even lower inhibitions about chatting with strangers standing on line than I do. Much, much lower, although I think that babes are given much more latitude than dudes in that respect, even babes that are someone's Mom.
Thirdly, the European way gives professors, even from other departments, high levels of respect, and especially from students, even graduate students. Yeah, I was rude to engage a student in conversation about their work, when they were openly displaying what they were working on in a public non-work venue. In Germany of a generation ago, where Dad was an undergrad, that would be rude behavior in disrespecting a faculty member expressing interest in what you are doing. Nowadays, people can inform me.
Fourthly, I have a nephew doing the exact same thing (research in abstract algebra). Mom would have mentioned the family connection whereas I just STFU about that part. Interestingly, Nephew behaves exactly the same way when I ask him about his work. So is this a "social aspect of people in Abstract Algebra" thing?
Doesn't it all just depend on what you're doing with the smart phone? The claim seems too sweeping w/o context. I am not a fan of the leash, and yet I'm as ill-behaved as most.
Those "dog-eared magazines in your doctor's office" going unread are usually three-month old leftist drivel from the Main Stream Media. We want something better! Long live the smart phone!
I have watched while this happens everywhere, but most interestingly to me, in my classroom. I teach some two-hour classes that the university requires my to have a ten minute break in the middle of. When I announce the break a small handfull go to the smoking area for a cigarette, but every other student pulls out their phone and starts doing something on the phone. For some it is a game, for others it is texts, for others the news or a blog they follow. , but I am the only person in the room doing nothing. I sit, I watch, I check my lesson plan for the next hour, maybe prepping a video , audio or presentation piece, mostly just doing nothing.
Mostly it is because I am not afraid of the downtime. Once, when I was teaching a listening class for crisis-hotline volunteers, I suggested that the trainees go home, turn off the TV and radio and just sit listening to the ambient noise in their house for 5 minutes. Aside from nobody ever, ever trying it, I had some trainees who refused to even consider it. They said flat out that they were afraid to not have the TV on when they walked in the house so they left it on when they went out. This was before the age of mobile phones, so today these kinds of people would be the ones waking up to check their email in the middle of the night.
Would you be surprised to know that I put my phone on to charge at night, downstairs where I can't hear it? And that I read (on my plain vanilla ereader) every night before I go to bed. And I check my email once every day for the 8 or 10 personal addresses and use a pop-up at work so that i am immediately available at work. I try to adapt in a reasonable way to tech, not be sucked in by the oh wow, stuff. I was doing an "iPad certification" training last week, it was embarrassing "and look at this cool feature" says the "Apple certified educator" (or some such title, he was a nice guy, but he drinks the kool-aid deeply) and the class goes :"ohhh, neat" for the same feature I have in gnome, or you have in KDE or is already there in IceCreamSand already. But presented properly it is "Wow!"
i'm gettin' too damn old and cranky.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.