As somebody who seldom carries a mobile phone, figures out local directions with an address and paper map, etc., this editorial resonates strongly with me, and the author illustrates his point beautifully. His expression, "diminished substitutes," captures a feeling I've had for a while about the 4G lifestyle, or even one that just takes place too much on the internet.
In the past 3-4 years, when smartphones completely hit the mainstream, I have noticed a very significant change in those around me, even in some people I am close with. They seem more ... robotic! I am certain if I moved in different circles, I would've noticed a similar pattern years before among BlackBerry users, who were the butt of the "CrackBerry" joke ca. 2004.
I'm not sure how else to describe somebody completely fixated on a small device, resorting to it almost like some security blanket when an everyday problem needs solving. Portable video games like Game Boy, and traditional mobile phones, which no doubt have been similarly derided in the past, offer a poor comparison for their limited scope. The small screen provides some strange tunnel vision I don't care to encounter.
I don't quite get that "security blanket" comment. If the phone is a useful tool for solving a problem, why not use it? Are we supposed to use old techniques just because the new ones aren't strictly necessary?
My experience in that regard has been pretty much the opposite. People are still stuck in a pre-smartphone mindset where you have to give people directions instead of an address, where you have to remember the locations of businesses you haven't visited in a long time instead of looking them up, where you have to guess about traffic conditions instead of just checking, etc.
It amuses me to no end when a crowd of techies get into a discussion about driving directions these days. No longer necessary!
Sure, there's no problem with you and I agreeing to disagree. I'm of the opinion that the mind operates like a sort of muscle, and that you can be in or out of shape for a particular thing, mentally. As the mapping example goes, any convenience I might gain from turn-by-turn directions, delivered on demand, does not outweigh the tremendous benefit I receive by thinking about where I am going, figuring out cardinal directions by the sun, and other things like that. The latter will seriously save you when you lose reception, phone is out of battery, you're in a place where online maps are out of date, etc. It's a real, applied skill.
So, what you see as a simple task I see as more of a practice, a way of living. This is just how I am about most things, being something of a perfectionist. And that's fine!
Dead reckoning and using the sun will get you really far in navigation. Unless you're trecking across the tundra or sailing the high seas, you'll need something a little Mir modern.
This is getting stupid, you're insisting on using a horse and carriage in a time of motor vehicles. Fine, I will just pass you on th highway, tip my hat and be thankful for living in a country where we have the freedom to be as eccentric as we want.
Regarding this specific point: as someone who likes to backpack, I use a paper map for the following reasons
* Because I may not have an internet connection near my destination
* Even if I do, my maps app has a thing for taking me to the wrong place. Anecdote: some friends and I went biking through a popular bike road through the woods. When checking the route on their phones, all they could see was "you are here", and nothing else because apparently the road didn't exist.
* Paper is more reliable than electronics: a paper map will survive a fall, water and mud, and it will never run out of battery.
I don't deny the usefulness of electronic maps for daily use, but I honestly don't trust them for visiting unfamiliar places.
Yea, definitely! That's why, like I said in another comment, for local routes I don't really use a map unless it's some place I haven't been before. If I know how to get to the road the place is on, and can figure out where it is reasonably based on the address, there's no point in using a map.
But I'd find a traveler foolhardy to not at least consult a map ahead of time when visiting some very new, distant place. The good thing is that it's normal in the US for gas stations to all carry local maps. So I'm usually not more than a few minutes from being able to stop off and get my bearings if needed -- last I had to do that was in a tricky part of NC (damned business/non-business routes) in 2007.
Or, rather than stop at a gas station to buy an out of date paper map, you could get with the program and pull out your smartphone and have the worlds most advanced cartographic system at your finger tips.
I do similar stuff with mental arithmetic, to make sure I can, and exercise it.
I think the main reason I go straight to fancy electronics when driving is because I don't really like driving all that much,and want to make sure I get to my destination as quickly as possible. I'd rather save the pain and effort for other things.
Memory will seriously save you when you're out of reach of your reference material, so why rely on flammable, fragile, heavy paper? Don't you see how mechanical people who rely on books are, always sticking their notes in their mechanisms to read words off wood pulp instead of pulling them out of their memories? How much better it would be if we abandoned print and went back to the simpler, better time of rote memorization!
Or is that maybe not what the human mind is best used for? Maybe, humans are best at being creative, and our tools help us at that task by freeing us of tedium and ignorance of simple facts.
True, some people misuse GPS technology by driving their cars into lakes. Some people misuse book technology by taking Von Däniken seriously. I'm not seeing a big difference between the two, moral or otherwise.
I know that your post was sarcastic and that you were illustrating a point (and I agree with you). It is interesting, however, that Plato actually argued the same thing that you outlined in your post!
"for this discovery of yours [writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." [1]
The interplay of memory and skill is something that interests me a lot, even though I claim no expertise in the field.
Historical evidence implies that it is true that the people who are able to leverage the tools at their disposal (be that actual tools like cell phones or just applying recent scientific breakthroughs) tend to do well in their life.
On the other hand, we have the idea that the mind is a muscle and it works best if we train it hard. In this mindset, we see objects as crutches that are best to be avoided in order to improve the mind as efficiently as possible.
I and people around me tend to focus on the first paradigm, leaving the second one unexplored.
One of the reasons may be that it is still largely philosophical: if you wanted to improve your memory, what would you do? There are books on people that use tricks to remember large digits and other chunks of data (the brother of Jonathan Safran, Joshua Foer, wrote one).
However, most of us believe that this is not the same type of memorization that can enable us to do pattern matching in our memories faster (which is what mathematicians need the most, being able to see parallels to math they've done before).
And even if we had a trick to pattern-match faster, in order to raise it from the level of "it was described in popular literature, but has no scientific basis" like mind maps and such, we would have to conduct very large studies to verify its validity, which is something that is not done at all in this area.
As a side remark, this is the same problem I have with nootropics. What works and what doesn't? For memorization and focus, it seems ADD medicine works somewhat. For Paul Erdös it was amphetamines which boosted his creativity -- is that better for us mathematicians? And what do these drugs do with us in the long term? Almost all evidence is anecdotal, and I'm not willing to risk my health to be a smarter scientist.
> On the other hand, we have the idea that the mind is a muscle and it works best if we train it hard. In this mindset, we see objects as crutches that are best to be avoided in order to improve the mind as efficiently as possible.
Those crutches frees up time to let one work on other muscles; muscles that might not have any known crutches (like practicing reading maps instead of practicing navigating by the stars some centuries ago).
In my experience, it's vastly more likely that a mobile device loses reception, power, etc. than it is that my paper suddenly goes up in flames. I'd probably have bigger problems to deal with if that were to happen. Paper relies on any old light source and can be preserved for a terribly long time (Dead Sea Scrolls) in the right conditions. It can be torn and soaked and retain its message, being such a reliable medium.
In LA personal directions are still useful because google and/or apple maps will give you a choice of some obvious routes that will all be clogged with traffic. It really is like "The Californians" on SNL.
I just started working for a new company a couple of months ago and my co-workers are all techies. We all decided to carpool together (I wasn't driving) and the driver was aimlessly looking around for the location.
I asked him about using google maps and he looked at me like I was an alien. Nobody else in the car ever used Google maps (or any form of GPS) regularly.
When I don't know how to get somewhere, I use GPS.
I tend to agree with you. I am mobile developer and have been since the days of WAP. I used to get excited about the latest mobile tech and software, and always carried the latest device.
Over the last few years my attitudes have changes considerably to the point where I no longer carry a personal smart phone around with me.
I started to notice that many, if not most conversations, I was having with real people were being interrupted by texts, emails, and other notifications, sometimes for only a second or two, but often to the point where the spoken topic of conversation was forgotten by the person i was talking with.
This included colleagues but also family members and friends.
I once tried to explain this to my own father during a lunch, but he took a ph call while I talking to him.
I have a zero tolerance policy toward this now. I don't get rude about it, but if someone will break a real life conversation with me to look a a notification, I usually excuse myself from the conversation.
I've often noticed the same thing, but to the extent that if I excused myself from each such conversation, I'd have no more conversations.
As regards my own behaviour: I keep a smartphone, but I have no notifications for email or SMS. I'll receive an interrupt for a phone call (something my relatives only tend to make in emergency situations) and that's it.
I think that, for me, this is the ideal balance between giving my full attention to conversations and being contactable.
When I say "excuse myself" I guess I really mean from any significant conversation. I may continue to spend time with people who behave like this, but I back out of any serious discussions if they are conducted with interruptions from personal devices.
Smalltalk is easy and requires very little thought or concentration anyway, but I no longer give my full attention if it is not reciprocated.
I don't make a point of doing it, but if I am left hanging mid-word while someone checks their phone, and they subsequently attempt to pick up the thread again, I just change the topic to a bullshit one (How 'bout that game on the w'end?).
Internet browsing is the ultimate retreat because it provides an infinite stream of novelty. Having that an unconscious reach away at all times is so potent. Indeed a completely different class to something like a video game which is both contained and usually has diminishing returns in extracting its novelty.
To the well trained mind reality provides an infinite stream of novelty. I suppose it's all down to perspective and what rewards you attune your brain to.
I'm curious about the notion of the so-called '4G lifestyle' which could be partially defined as an unhealthy fixation on technological substitutes to face-to-face communication, as Safran Foer describes in his piece. Perhaps smartphones (and now Google's Glass Project) are the most iconic manifestations of diminished substitutes fueling these robotic behaviours you mention.
Oh, definitely. Maybe before we rush to adopt smartphones, we should stop to consider the consequences of blithely giving this technology such a central position in our lives.
It's odd that you're on hackernews if you don't have a phone and use paper maps. That just seems like an odd combination.
I actually find it very hard to believe that someone who develops for a living wouldn't use google maps, which are far superior to paper maps (traffic, for one thing). I'd be very suspicious of your code!
Tech worker here. I discarded my smartphone in favor of a brick dumbphone. I have a car GPS unit that I use sometimes, and I also use Google Maps, but I am starting to use paper maps quite frequently. Both for the backcountry, and driving around in the backcountry.
Personally, I am trying to be selective about the technology I employ, based on what I get out of it. Vacuums? Check. Digital cameras? Check. Smartphones? Not sold on it, and I had one for a few years.
There's more of us than you think, and we don't appreciate the jab at the quality of our work.
Google Maps is quite useless for navigating in the backcountry, especially now that they appear to be dropping the "terrain" maps. But that doesn't mean all digital maps are useless.
Paper maps are like horse drawn carriages - sure they still work, but they are outdated, inaccurate and a relic of the past. It's like saying you still pull out an encyclopedia.
You can argue all you want about how hipster it is to use a dumb phone, and you're entitled to reject any technology you want, but I'm still highly suspicious of your work, out of band Luddite tendencies are a red flag.
You show me a smart phone with a telephoto lens, and I'll show you a smart phone that is a camera.
they are outdated, inaccurate and a relic of the past
Paper maps don't run out of batteries at the least opportune moment. At the very least, they are a good backup for your tech in the backcountry.
ou can argue all you want about how hipster it is to use a dumb phone
You make this much too complicated. A smartphone costs more money, and offers me no added value that I care about. Is that Luddite-ism? Or is the Luddite-ism the part where I don't feel compelled to tweet or "check in" every where I go?
I lost my smartphone about a month ago. I bought a cheap 20 euro dumb phone as a quick replacement until I decided to buy a new iPhone. To be honest, I'm loving the dumbphone. And the fact the battery lasts more than a week in a single charge is just the icing on the cake.
I'll probably end up buying a new iPhone as I develop for it, but for now, I'm quite happy with it.
Why must a camera have a telephoto lens specifically? Maybe you meant to say "interchangeable lenses" but that would still ignore the vast majority of cameras, point-and-shoot cameras with a built-in zoom or fixed lens.
Maybe a cell phone camera would not be useful to you but I reject your snobbish assertion that a "camera" is defined by anything beyond its ability to capture and store photon information.
Btw they make lots of clamp-on lenses for iPhones et al. Some are even telephoto. I suppose it's still not a camera because it doesn't have a prism or a hot shoe or some other nonsensical thing you want to fixate on.
Hah, you are really feeling quite insulted aren't you!
I suppose I should clarify; a camera I can use. I didn't mean to say "interchangeable lenses", although I like those too. Certainly other people get by with smartphone cameras, but they do not meet my needs. Is that so hard for you to accept?
(Not the original commenter.) I'm a fan of interactive maps and use them much more than paper maps, but I've been rediscovering an appreciation for traditional fold-up maps lately, especially when traveling.
A few reasons, some of which only apply in some situations:
1. When traveling in Europe without data-roaming, I printed out some maps ahead of time to navigate. I sort of liked the experience; compared to doing point-to-point routing on demand, it was more of a lay-of-the-land thing where I studied the map to get a feel for how things fit together, where I should be heading, and how I could recognize where I was. It felt like I got an idea of the area faster, whereas when routing is always available it's like when you're following someone else who's navigating: you don't really learn how things fit together because you're just following them.
2. Having done that, I found that, while sometimes unwieldy, a traditional fold-out map is typically much better designed than the collection of one-page views I printed off of Google Maps. For one thing, a good one will have some useful insets, visible landmarks both marked on the map and in an index, and much more reliable printing of street names (if you print out a map from Google Maps, the names of streets will infuriatingly often be left off, depending on the zoom level and density).
3. The online maps' data quality is often worse than a paper map for an area. A few weeks ago I was using a Google Maps map to navigate in Crete, and the "road" I thought I would be taking dead-ended and turned into a footpath with a gate, resulting in an inconvenient 5-point turn and detour. The transition from road to footpath wasn't marked on Google maps, which showed the whole thing as a thru road. A paper map of Crete I switched to did not have this mistake. Sometimes—in areas with many editors—OpenStreetMaps is better in this regard, especially if you want to find footpaths or stairs, which Google Maps often omits. But in Crete the OSM data was not good either.
4. I find it easier to discuss locations with other people by pointing to a paper map than by us both looking at a smartphone screen. Admittedly, the larger screen of a tablet might solve this problem.
to 1. For hitchhiking in Europe, that's all one needs - one coarse map with the main roads so one can figure out which roads can be taken and what to tell potential rides ('Are you going to Paris? - doesn't make sense if you're on a road to Rome.').
This lay-of-the-land feeling you're talking about is really important when you're not in control of your own vehicle and have to make decisions such as where to get off. It's like some fun game, really.
footnote: I don't recommend hitchhiking for anyone who's not sure they want to do it. It's dangerous.
(For others though, I can definitely recommend, since it's great fun and the amount of lone people driving their cars all over the continent for business appointments is insane. Sometimes you get a tour guide intoduction to the local landscape, sometimes there's an in-depth introduction to elevator construction in dams.)
Regarding mapping, note I said I don't rely on point-A-to-B directions for local trips. For long trips where I am not familiar with my destination, I typically plug it into Google Maps (that might change now, though I know of no appropriate substitute) and study the route, comparing alternatives. I write my route, both ways, on a single piece of paper. By studying my route, I am aware of confusing interchanges and such ahead of time. If I think a turn will sneak up on me, I write down the preceding streets intersected. Often the act of writing my route down means I never have to refer to the paper on the trip, a nice perk. I always could call the place if I get a little lost.
On not using smartphones and being on this website ... I don't see the contradiction. I am a software developer, mainly working on sever-side software and some desktop development tools. The skills I claim to know (Erlang, JavaScript, Python, software design in the large ...) I know very well. No conveniences or lack thereof are going to change that. I don't really develop for mobile, except incidentally. My computing happens at a desktop or on a laptop, and I don't feel my experience or knowledge are limited, except in the mobile sphere. Even if all consumer computing were to move to mobile, there would still be lots of server-side software to be programmed.
There's a whole lot of computing that happens outside of desktops, mobile devices, and networked services. I know little about firmware development and manufacturing software as well, for instance.
I noticed you suggest you wouldn't care for my code ... it's true that best software I've written has not been open source, and I have a nasty habit of pulling down any project I am not very proud of. Peruse at your leisure: https://github.com/oinksoft
In the past 3-4 years, when smartphones completely hit the mainstream, I have noticed a very significant change in those around me, even in some people I am close with. They seem more ... robotic! I am certain if I moved in different circles, I would've noticed a similar pattern years before among BlackBerry users, who were the butt of the "CrackBerry" joke ca. 2004.
I'm not sure how else to describe somebody completely fixated on a small device, resorting to it almost like some security blanket when an everyday problem needs solving. Portable video games like Game Boy, and traditional mobile phones, which no doubt have been similarly derided in the past, offer a poor comparison for their limited scope. The small screen provides some strange tunnel vision I don't care to encounter.