The value of smartphones
Jjbees writes:
Please write more about smartphones and how everyone is addicted to them and it destroys Civic culture and acts as a security blanket for adult discomfort with being in public.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve come to see the value of smartphones. So much time previously wasted doing nothing can now be spent reading the news, or even my blog comments.
I don’t recall that, before smartphones, being in public was any more civic than it is today. Ghetto youth using smartphones are far preferable to ghetto youth who are bored, so I suspect that smartphones are one of the reasons for why violent crime has decreased (although smartphones have led to a new class of nonviolent crime, smartphone theft).
I’d like to learn how to program iOS apps, but I think I’ve gotten too old to learn new programming languages. Every time I try to learn Xcode I just find it so boring, unlike when I was younger and I liked that stuff.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
It’s not the phone itself that is a problem..it’s when it makes annoying game and music noises and people talk in public with it
grey enlightenment
March 7, 2017 at 5:07 PM
Ghetto people are even able to make talking on the phone into this huge obnoxious display. They turn on the speakerphone and hold the phone like a walkie talkie.
While it’s somewhat common to see upscale people yelling into their phones but I’ve never seen them do the speakerphone thing.
Magnavox
March 7, 2017 at 6:32 PM
I find it obnoxious to even use phones in public. Or even in private if there are others around who aren’t involved in the call. Not only is it rude to blather on while ignoring those present it also exposes private conversation to people on the other end. I was once in a meeting where a group was discussing a sensitive issue with private details and some knucklehead in the corner was sneaking a phone call. The person on the other end had his speaker on and ignorantly broadcasting it to a room full of people. Ever since that’s been a major pet peeve. Phone calls should be taken in private on both ends.
destructure
March 7, 2017 at 11:37 PM
“Not only is it rude to blather on while ignoring those present it also exposes private conversation to people on the other end.”
Right, that’s why you should use text messages!
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 8, 2017 at 12:59 AM
Lion, and to text ignoring others isn’t rude? You can’t have a normal conversation at the table because of this dumb device. Phones are chirping, texts are flying, conversations going on with dozens of people simultaneously. Totally stupid. Mad, mad, mad world.
Yakov
March 8, 2017 at 8:40 AM
Before smart phones, people often read books, magazines, and newspapers, listened to music on headphones, or played portable video games in public. It’s not as if strangers were all routinely chatting with each other before the advent of smart phones.
Addiction to social media on smart phones is an issue though.
David Pinsen
March 7, 2017 at 5:23 PM
Actually, as a longtime commute bus rider I used to notice, even before the advent of smartphones in ’04, that hardly anyone read magazines or newspapers anymore. I did see a lot of people doing coding on laptops. Anyway, here’s a new development in magazines, if anyone cares: Car & Driver, which many people enjoyed for its sprightly writing, is now encased in plastic, like Hustler.
marty
March 7, 2017 at 6:11 PM
I confirm your suspicion about the superiority of the iphone to androids. I use an iphone 4 I bought used from Ebay for $65. It blows away every android I had before, though after dropping it several times I’ve lost sound and have to depend on vibration.ow One of the androids had better call quality, but took forever to power on.
Mel Belli
March 7, 2017 at 5:32 PM
Just anecdotally, I’d have to say that discomfort with public interaction long predates smartphones. I’ll never forget one time around ’96 or ’98 when a student in Sproul Plaza in Berkeley told me how disgusted he was with the shallowness of the conversations he had with his contemporaries.
marty
March 7, 2017 at 5:37 PM
“Ghetto youth using smartphones are far preferable to ghetto youth who are bored, so I suspect that smartphones are one of the reasons for why violent crime has decreased” True, and now that everyone has a smartphone they have their own video camera as well, meaning that a criminal much less likely to get away with any public shenanigans.
Gilbert Ratchet
March 7, 2017 at 5:45 PM
Apparent smartphone usage is prole. Americans need smartphones, because most of them are empty suits.
JS
March 7, 2017 at 5:56 PM
Lol. You can be funny.
Yakov
March 7, 2017 at 9:26 PM
Aren’t iOS apps in Swift?
Otis the Sweaty
March 7, 2017 at 6:28 PM
“I’d like to learn how to program iOS apps, but I think I’ve gotten too old to learn new programming languages. Every time I try to learn Xcode I just find it so boring, unlike when I was younger and I liked that stuff.”
Maybe since you live in a world now where entertainment is so easy to obtain via your smartphone, you don’t have the discipline to actually do anything that is difficult.
Also regarding smartphones, I think they really are one of the worst things that ever happened in my lifetime. The internet is now filled with more idiots than I ever thought possible. It used to be that you needed a desire to actually get a desktop computer and highspeed internet to effectively use the internet. This limited people in poverty, who are in general lower IQ and less educated than the middle class counter-parts, from using the internet. Once the smartphone came along it allowed all these people to come online and put us in a “eternal September” like situation. These things were subsidized by the companies by tricking you into signing a expensive contract and you get the phone for free, of course dumb people will get it because they all need phones and lack the future time orientation to see how much the phone is actually going to cost over the course of 2 years. The comments section on most mainstream websites was much more tolerable 6 years ago than it is today. Now you have to go to obscure places on the web to find anyone with more than three brain cells.
I also blame smartphones for starting the current wave of social justice movements, as before minorities didn’t have access to the internet so they couldn’t be dickheads to cops then film their reaction and put it on the internet. Also white people I know use them to go to protests and livestream it, that way they can virtue signal to everyone on facebook and it gets more of them to go to protests.
You can try to tell me it has increased my productivity or whatever, but to me it just seems like all work places require you to answer your email faster than they did 5 years ago. People always ask me, “Why don’t you get rid of it then?”. The reason is because its a device of competition, I can’t expect any employer to want me without it. It’s harder to meet women without one as well, because many women now use dating apps and websites to find guys. The only way I’d get rid of mine is if everyone else got rid of theirs, its an arms race on a personal level.
Yup
March 7, 2017 at 7:36 PM
What about the average monthly cost for a smartphone’s service plan? If it’s around $60-$80 per month, then for some people (like me), that can really add up. I’m not made out of money, and there are other things I would prioritize for my spending.
Yankee
March 7, 2017 at 7:58 PM
It’s my understanding that they’ve come down in price during the last 2 years.
Lion of the Blogosphere
March 7, 2017 at 8:20 PM
Samsung Sky and 1 year of service with 1350 min,data, texts for around 105.00 That’s cheap.
ttgy
March 8, 2017 at 7:41 PM
“smartphones have led to a new class of nonviolent crime, smartphone theft”
Really? I thought if you’re on foodstamps then you automatically qualify for an Obamaphone. And since nobody’s making the old flip phones anymore, doesn’t that mean every Foodstamp American already has a tardphone? Maybe Foodstamp Americans steal tardphones to get an undocumented upgrade and/or sell for drug money.
hard9bf
March 7, 2017 at 8:31 PM
I just joined Instagram and once I started to getting notices from friends and photos of their nights out and meals etc., I felt a mounting sense of dread.
Smartphones are amazing devices but we’ve all felt that uncomfortable moment when we noticed ourselves caressing it and muttering “my precious”.
SWPL2
March 8, 2017 at 9:57 AM
people dont like talking to strangers, they never have. people dont do it as much as anyone thinks at all, and usually if people are talking to you off the street in public they either way something from you (money) or they are crazy.
james n.s.w
March 8, 2017 at 3:28 PM
This is incorrect.
People don’t do it anymore because they are full of fear due to never practicing social skills because they have been roped into the comfort of a smartphone, with easy dopamine hits.
jjbees
March 8, 2017 at 7:14 PM
I pretty much agree that people are uncomfortable just talking to a stranger standing there. It’s natural for humans to be wary of strangers from the hunting-gathering days because someone would likely hurt you if they weren’t in you group.
It doesn’t have anything to do with smartphones. Smartphones haven’t even been around that long.
ttgy
March 8, 2017 at 10:45 PM
Smartphones are another technology proving the end of humans as we know it.
No need to talk to people face to face about anything nowadays, when all the world is a scene that is on the phone.
Another technology that I’m looking forward to — lifelike animation that renders Hollywood actors as obsolete. I can create my own professional movies and shows with it.
JS
March 8, 2017 at 11:25 PM
It’s always an Obama supporter at fault every time you see a headline about someone who went beserk and attacked other after being asked to tone down the profanity they’d been yelling into a cell phone in a public place:
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140409/flatiron/woman-hurls-ketchup-bottles-after-being-shushed-for-talking-on-cellphone
Camlost
March 9, 2017 at 11:36 AM